


Mad World

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [110]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternative realities, Gen, Hallucinations, M/M, Pre-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-19 09:38:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7355683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tad Anderson is 53; a lecturer in the deductive method at the National Policing Improvement Agency, the ex-drummer of Collared, since he got stabbed through the hand saving Greg Lestrade's life. He's also dangerously ill with pneumonia; and he's about to live another life that is only his in another reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The dreams in which I'm dying

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 300th entry for AO3, and the 111th for Guitar Man. I wanted to do something a bit different to celebrate. This series has never been at all magical, but a little magical realism never hurt anyone. After all, as we all know, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are destined to meet in every world, in every lifetime. And sometimes, Anderson is part of their story.
> 
> This chapter references a number of my own other universes, as well as Atlin Merrick's Feeding Sherlock, and a whole bunch of other fannish AUs, with love to them all.
> 
> The story and chapter titles are all from Mad World from the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Tad's eyes were open but everything was blurry, as though seen from under water. He was in an unfamiliar room, though the person opposite him was familiar enough.

Sherlock. Looking strangely young, and when had he started dying his hair? Vain twat. Not usually about his looks, more about his brain, but maybe he was feeling his years. Weren't they all?

And Tad had always suspected the great pillock spent ages more on his hair than he let on. In the early days he’d been tempted to be snide about it. Later, after they were both in John’s band, Tad started seeing the whole hair thing as refreshingly human. In that light, Sherlock suddenly deciding to dye the grey out was just sort of engaging of him.

Sherlock was telling him some strange story about jumping from a height. An inflatable landing platform. Cars and the homeless network and John and...God, that was ages ago. Twenty years? Nobody _cared_ any more.

Tad was having trouble hearing the whole bizarre explanation, too. His ears were blocked and in the distance was a steady beep.

"What?" He mumbled.

"Oh, do listen, Phil."

Tad blinked in confusion.  "Phil?"

"Are you paying attention? I'm only saying this once."

Tad frowned and looked around. The walls were covered in charts, pins, maps and string. It looked like the wall he'd once made to help track that serial killer, and Sherlock had scoffed but it had worked. Tad couldn't keep all of it in his head the way Sherlock could, but externalising the lists and links had been useful.

He looked back at Sherlock. "Who's Phil?"

Sherlock looked confused. "Even I don't believe you’re stupid enough to have forgotten your own name, Anderson."

"Thaddeus Phillip Anderson," said Tad out loud, but he still felt like he was under water.

In the back of his brain a faint, shrill voice was shouting _He means me. Who are you? Get out of my head!_

Tad pressed fingers to his eyelids. "Don't be a git, Sherlock, I've had a fuck of a week and I don't feel well. John says if I'm not careful I'll come down with pneumonia. As if. I may be skinny but I’m strong as an ox. I never get sick."

And then he fainted.

*

_The beeping is louder and he feels hot and also cold and everything is so far away. Charlotte’s voice is making worried sounds but it might as well be Chinese for all he understands._

_Why did Sherlock call him Phil?_

_Why does everything ache?_

_Why blooming in the dank dark dark so cold cold, dance and beat beat beat it doesn't make sense nothing makes oh oh oh he wants it to be quiet._

_He's burning or he's drowning. He doesn’t know which._

*

His collar was stiff, strangling-tight, and it scratched. His shirt scratched too, and his trousers, and what the hell was he doing wearing a _hat_?

Tad blinked and squinted at the body on the slab. This was a terrible mortuary. It looked like photographs of St Bart’s back in the Victoria era. Not a mortuary, then, obviously. A crime scene.

It didn’t explain the hat.

Long, elegant hands poked at the body’s flesh. Tad blinked again. Sherlock was examining a puncture wound in the corpse’s chest, then moved swiftly to pick up and examine the dead man’s fingernails.

Sherlock was also wearing a hat. And a frock coat.

Beside him, John – with the most godawful moustache, and the same bizarre costume of old-fashioned coat and a bowler hat – was commenting on lividity and the likely cause of the chest wound.

“Don’t just stand there, man,” snapped Sherlock, “Cause of death?”

Tad cleared his throat. He looked around for a report but there was none, then remembered that this was probably the crime scene, since it could hardly be the lab. He looked at the wound, and the victim’s mouth, and he frowned. The wound was post-mortem. “He was stabbed after he was killed. Hang on.” He leaned over the body and had to hold on to the hat. He sniffed at the victim’s mouth. “There’s no immediate evidence of poison, but I suppose a tox screen will give us that when we get him to the lab for the complete work up. What’s with the fingernails, anyway?” He came around to that side of the table, ignoring Sherlock’s puzzled glare, “Oh, I see – blood and skin. I’ll order a DNA test, see if we can’t find a match.”

“Are you quite well, Dr Anderson?”

Tad straightened up and looked at John, who had spoken in an odd accent. Like he was trying to sound more posh. Maybe it was the effect of that stupid moustache.  

“Fit as a fiddle, John.” he said, though that was a lie. His chest hurt. His lungs felt suddenly thick. He peered at Sherlock through a fog of bewilderment.

Sherlock (in a top hat, why the hell was Sherlock in a top hat?) raised a silver-topped walking stick and pressed it against Tad’s breastbone. “You are not quite yourself, I perceive,” said Sherlock in a tone that was odd and clipped, even for Sherlock.

“This isn’t funny,” said Tad.

 _This is the very work of the devil_. A voice in his head, his own voice, but speaking oddly, the cadences all wrong. _God defend me. Release me, you devil._

“Why are you dressed up for a Victorian melodrama?” Tad asked Sherlock, but Sherlock was giving him that piercing, laser-like glare that meant he was trying to read him like a book. Tad always hated that look. It made him feel naked and inadequate. Sherlock hadn’t done that to him in a long time.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, “I skipped breakfast and I missed a spot shaving and I got dizzy on the way to the Tube and had to sit down for a bit. I was coughing all night, all right? It’s just a chest cold. Sod off.”

Sherlock’s gloved fingers were suddenly pressed against his cheek. The gloved fingers that had recently been handling the dead man. Tad flinched away. “For Christ’s sake, Sherlock, use the fucking latex gloves and stop being a prat. And when are we getting this guy to St Bart’s so Molly can do a full examination?”

“Dr Anderson, we’re already _at_ St Bart’s,” said John in his faux posh voice, with concern, “And who is Molly?”

Tad’s knees suddenly unlocked and he began to sag. He felt hot. Cold. Burning. He couldn’t breathe. Sherlock tried to catch him as he fell, saving him from hitting his head on the table, but he felt weak and confused and lost, lost, so lost.

The voice that sounded like his own but wasn’t began to cry out in the back of his mind.

_Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Dear God, please, release me from this demon. Thy will be done, Lord, please._

Everything, everything, everything went away.

*

_The beeping is erratic and voices are calling to each other like there is an emergency and he doesn’t understand a word of it.  Nothing makes the slightest bit of sense. John and Sherlock dressed for a pantomime in those stupid hats, looking young again, talking oddly. That pair have an odd sense of humour at times, but not that odd. What’s it all for?_

_His chest hurts, his lungs hurt, he hurts, all over he hurts, beep-beep-beep, why can’t he breathe why can’t he move why why why is everything everything everything so strange?_

_*_

Tad stared at the men walking down the carpet, hand in hand, gazing at each other and grinning like lovestruck teens. Sherlock and John. Well.

Well.

This made no fucking sense at all.

Sally, sitting next to Tad, her hand resting on his, also made no fucking sense at all. She looked great, though. Twenty years younger, for a start. Just like John and Sherlock.

Tad was aware that vows were being said and he peered at John. John talking about things that normally he put into his songs, about Sherlock. The whole band knew that John wrote sort-of-love songs about Sherlock. Not romantic love songs, but even so. Bromantic, maybe. Epic Best Friend Love Songs.

But this was not like the songs John wrote, really. This whole thing felt more like that top hat incident in the morgue, which Tad remembered like a dream.

 _Shut up,_ hissed a voice in his head. _What are you? Who are you? Fuck off out of my head._

John finished speaking but then he said something, not out loud – something just for Sherlock. Tad had spent a few years learning to lip-read, though, back in the day, when he found out it was one of the ways Sherlock got his impressive results. And he could have sworn that John looked Sherlock in the eye and said ‘My honeybee’. And instead of Sherlock scoffing at the name, he only smiled.

 _Well, why not?_ Tad thought. _Nothing else makes any sense but if they’re getting married to each other, why the hell not be a honeybee?_ And now Sherlock was being all mushy about songs that John sang to him.

What?

Nothing made sense. Nothing at all. Certainly not John and Sherlock in wedding suits being all heart-eyes at each other in front of a crowd and _getting married_.

 _They’re in love_ , said the voice, _they act like such tough guys, but they are completely soppy about each other._

Tad didn’t know where the voice came from but it seemed no more mad than anything else going on, so he replied to it. _Those two have always been six inches of armour plating wrapped around a hundred miles of heart._

It took him years to learn that, but it was one of the truest things he knew.

A wave of dizziness washed over him. People were throwing rice and cheering, and Tad felt the world slip away.

*

_It hurts to breathe. Like the time Brian Shaeffer pushed his head into the sofa at Jake's birthday when they were all ten, and he thought he was going to die. Like the time his big brother broke three sets of drum sticks and said if Tad didn't stop being stupid about a music career, dad would burn the whole kit. Like the time Lorraine, his ex, laughed when he packed the bags to go and said he'd never have the guts to go because he was such a failure on his own, and how that had been true until the year he thought he'd helped to kill Sherlock Holmes and decided if he was a failure, then he could at least be a failure who tried to do better and be better._

_All those times, it hurt to breathe; he couldn't breathe. Those were the times the oxygen dragged heavy in his teeth and wouldn’t feed his lungs._

_It hurts to breathe._

_It hurts._

_*_

Tad gasped, drawing almost a sob of breath, but no-one was looking at him. Everyone was looking through the glass partition into the DI's office, where Sherlock was on his knees, head tilted up, while John shoved spoonful after spoonful of ice cream into that open mouth, and then suddenly took the mouthful himself, bent down and fed the ice cream directly into Sherlock's mouth, past lips and onto tongue, and then again, and it was sensual and passionate and someone nearby (not him) groaned in overstimulated sympathy.

Tad was reminded a little of how Sherlock and John played music together. Not the sexualness of it, but the unstinting giving and acceptance of it.

 _They're so young_ , thought Tad, _and they have sex, these two_. _They're not the John and Sherlock I know. None of them are my John and Sherlock._

 _What the hell?_ said the little voice that sounded like him but wasn't. _What the **fuck?**_

*

_Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-bup-bip-bip-bipbipbipbipbipbip…_

_And he can’t breathe he can’t breathe and it hurts his chest his heart his body everything everything oh oh oh god oh god he doesn’t want to go he doesn’t want…._

*

A kaleidoscope, then.

A John glaring at him, sharpened teeth, literally vampire-like, bared.

Sherlock and John, dressed for baseball. John with that moustache again, but this time brewing coffee. Sherlock in ballet tights. John and Sherlock with a blonde woman Tad has never before seen in his life.

*

_“We’re losing him. Oxygen!”_

_Something is attached to the bare skin of his slender chest and it **jolts** …_

_It hurts._

*

The parade of Johns and Sherlocks seems to take place across time, across countries, across worlds, even. Sometimes they hardly seem themselves.

This John, with the walk of a predator, speaking to a strange woman: “Well, 007…”

A Sherlock more heavily muscled, much paler and colder, hair swept back, but reaching with sudden and infinite tenderness for a savage-looking, hunchbacked, bearded John, who closed his eyes and crooned ‘thou art all stars and beauty, my moonlit prince’ at the touch.

*

_He is drifting and the pain is going away, except for the buzz in his ear and that mellows down to a background hush, a murmur, and all the pain is going…_

_Going…_

_Going…_

*

Flicker flicker flicker.

A dozen Sherlock-and-Johns, a dozen little voices in the back of his mind registering protest and then...

And then...

*

_Gone._

*

“Here, watch your step!”

Lestrade caught Anderson by the elbow and held him up. Tad blinked and straightened, recovering from the swoon.

_Where am I now?_

“You all right, Anderson?”

Tad frowned at Greg – looking so young! – and then at his own hands clutching to Greg’s forearms for steadiness.

At his left hand, curled as easily as the right, despite the fact that no amount of surgery had ever restored full mobility to it after he’d been stabbed through it, saving Greg. Well worth it, Tad had always thought, though he missed drumming.

He flexed his hands, right and left, and saw the left unscarred, unblemished, capable of both being curled into a fist and spread out flat.

 _No, seriously._ _Where am I now?_

And then he saw the crime scene numbers and the photographer and the body on the concrete.

“Fainting at the sight of blood, now?” The sneer in the familiar voice was unmistakable, though it was years since he’d heard it with that precise tone.

“Not likely, you prat,” Tad replied, irritated but not really heated. He shook his hand as though shaking off water and arched an eyebrow at Sherlock. “I’ve had the flu. I think it’s buggered up my balance.” He was still flexing his left hand, enjoying the sensation of simply being able to do so. Plus that persistent ache in the small of his back had finally sodded off.

_I feel twenty years younger!_

The voice deep in his head he’d come to expect. _What the fuck? What the fuck? What’s going on?_

 _Shh_ , he told that deep-down voice. _I probably won’t be here longer than a second or two._

But about that, Tad Anderson was very, very wrong.


	2. Going Nowhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tad Anderson is stuck in a weird dream. He's supposed to be moving on or waking up but he's... going nowhere. He's at a 20 year old crime scene, but it's not quite as he remembers. Mostly because Sherlock and John are not quite as he remembers. Everything's strange and Tad has to keep his mantras in mind if he's going to cope with it; and get that idiot Inner Anderson to shut up too.

Tad Anderson had always been a vivid dreamer. His dreams were full of colour and detail, even when the things happening in it were a bit lunatic. Often in his dreams he knew he was dreaming, even though he couldn’t influence the shape of his nocturnal storytelling. This, Tad thought, was just another detailed, vivid, nearly lucid dream.

“What have we got?” he said aloud, figuring if he was going to be passing through a parade of weird other worlds, he might as well see what was going on.

Sherlock made a mockingly sweeping a gesture at the crime scene. A bloodless body lay curled on the concrete floor of the old butcher shop, its back to the tiled wall. A man, mid-twenties. Shaved all over. Naked.

“Oh, I remember this one,” Tad said, “Cause of death looked like exsanguination, but that’s post-mortem. It’s one of the cases I…”

Tad fell silent, but not because of the way Sherlock and John and Greg were staring at him.

He was dreaming about one of the cases Tad had gone over with Sally after Sherlock’s pretend death. Before they knew it was pretend, of course, and when he and Sally were both still convinced that Sherlock was a fake.

One of the 184 cases they’d been forced to review before concluding that Sherlock could not possibly be a fraud. The case that had definitively changed Tad’s mind and made him realise what a terrible mistake he’d made.

Tad drew a long, deep breath and then exhaled slowly. He cocked his head and looked hard at the body. Then he turned and looked hard at everyone else in the bare room.

There was Greg, looking as harassed as he always used to, back then. And Sally – long before she’d left the Met for MI5, and married Mycroft and had Ford.

John and Sherlock, young again. He looked at them the hardest. The longest. Because they were different. Somehow. They were different.

_This doesn’t feel like my usual dreams. Or the ones I’ve just been having. Why am I still here?_

Tad waited for this world to fade as quickly as the others had. It didn’t, so he frowned and approached the body. He stopped several feet away. He remembered this case down to the last file note. He’d gone over it and over it and over it.

“He suffocated,” Tad said, sounding distant even to himself. “Blue around the mouth there, see? Bruises around his nose, his throat. The lividity in his face and shoulders shows he was hung upside down first – look at the bruises on his ankles, there, where he got strung up, like game, you know, a deer or something. It’s not a full hunter’s field dressing – he hasn’t been eviscerated, though he’s been drained of blood after death. Incision on the inside leg, you’ll find. After he died, the killer washed the blood off – there’s some still around the drainage hole in the floor, you see there? – and then hung him right side up on a butcher’s hook – there’s a post-mortem wound in his back for the hook. Took him off again, though, left him here. That’s the clue, isn’t it? Why go to all that effort, and then just leave him on the floor? Killer got interrupted, had to leave him here. Poor sod. His mum’s devastated. He was a prick of a kid, but he was all she had.”

The dizziness took him again. His knees wobbled and sagged.

 _Here I go again_ , he thought.

But John Watson caught him under the arm and helped him up. “You’ve got a fever,” said John.

“Yeah. But I’ll be fine. It’s just a cold.” He shook his head to clear it, and the back of John’s cool hand on his brow helped. Tad huffed a laugh. “Good ol’ Doc Watson. Cures what ails ya, huh, John?”

John gave him a look of concern and grabbed Tad’s wrist to check his heart rate.

Tad blinked and saw, through his hazy vision, the way Sherlock was scowling at them. At John’s hand on Tad’s wrist. Scowling like a jealous boyfriend. Then Sherlock saw Tad seeing him and his face went blank. Haughty.

“Not fooling anybody, Sherlock,” said Tad, grinning and friendly, not entirely with it. “Epic besties, you two. Except those times you were getting married. Though, to be fair, epic besties then too. _Honeybee._ That was cute.”

“You’re delirious,” said Sherlock sharply.

“Not feeling in the top percentile, no,” Tad agreed.

His knees really did fold under him that time, and he sat on the ground, breathing through the dizziness, while John did his Doctor Watson thing. Someone passed Tad a cup of water and someone else helped him to sip it and he waited. He waited for this world to slip away.

He waited and it didn’t happen.

He waited, and he _stayed_.

And then the dizziness cleared away, and Tad Anderson felt… fine. Tired, but fine.

Only here he still was, with the corpse and crime scene from a twenty year old case, in a time before they’d all been touched and changed by what James Moriarty had done to Sherlock Holmes. To all of them.

_This doesn’t feel like a dream._

_You’re **not** dreaming_ , came the other-Anderson’s voice deep-down, _I’ve finally gone mad. What’s this about this corpse being bled out through the thigh and the meat-hook in the back? You can’t see those things…_

_Shush. Shut up. Shush. I have to think._

_I’m fighting with myself. I’ve gone loopy. Sherlock fucking Holmes has driven me loopy at last. You've gone doolally, Phillip Anderson...  
_

_My name is Tad._

_It's Phillip._

_Phillip is my middle name._

_Thaddeus is a stupid first name._

_Fuck you. It means courageous._

_It means your parents hate you and every kid for three burroughs around, including your shitty siblings, call you Thud._

**_They get tired of it. Especially when you take up drums. It accidentally made Thud cool. I got Tadpole. Screw what they think anyway. And shut up._ ** _**You’re lowering the IQ of the whole street.**_

The inner voice shushed. Sulked, maybe.

Tad breathed slowly and deeply and considered the facts. That’s what Sherlock would do. He wouldn’t theorise without data. He’d gather data. Fine. Fine. Even if this was some crackpot kind of dream that kept playing out second-for-second instead of flipping through time and space like normal dreams, he could do that. He could steady himself and gather data.

 **One**. Old crime scene; something from his past. He knew the answer to this one. He even knew how Sherlock had reached his conclusions. It was one of Tad Anderson’s pivotal moments in forensics. To learn just how much he didn’t see, and from there to learn how to look. His checklist started here. His rebirth as a properly good detective started here.

 **Two.** He could feel the cold concrete against his backside and legs where he sat. He could smell blood, human waste – this was the murder scene, all right. Washed away but not entirely. They’d have to open up the drains. They would find this wasn’t the first murder here. Delgardo The Butcher didn’t earn his name idly, and he’d been busy this week. Rats in the ranks. Discipline.  Three men killed to make his point about loyalty.

 **Three.** He could feel the breath in his lungs. Hairs on the back of his neck. Cloth against his skin. He could hear cars outside, and birds. He could hear Sally Donovan snorting impatiently as he sat here, and Greg sighing like he always did when things got weird and complicated at crime scenes. Heat emanated from John Watson, standing closest to him, and a scent that was… familiar but in the wrong place? _Think on that in a moment._

 **Four.** He could feel the seconds passing. Second by ordinary second, in chronological order. Not like dreams. Like life.  _Put that aside too._

 **Five.** If he glanced surreptitiously up, he could see Sherlock Holmes was glaring at him. Jealous that John Watson had held Tad Anderson’s wrist, and was doing so again now.

Wait, what?

 _Of course he is_ , came the deep-down voice. _That pompous, arrogant prick is madly in love with his straight flatmate_. _Everyone knows it. Everyone except Watson. And he calls **us** stupid._

 _Shut up,_ Tad told the other Anderson inside him. _You’re seeing but not observing. John Watson is wearing Sherlock Holmes’s purple shirt._ The cuffs of the shirt, long in the arm, kept falling out from under the cuffs of John’s jacket. A little tight across John’s shoulders, he could see, but a little loose around the neck. _Oh_ , where the pink blush of a love bite could be seen. And there was John giving Sherlock his patented, rather fond Don’t Be Git look, and Sherlock… smiling, that tiny little smile that he only did for John and thought nobody else ever saw it.

_Wrong shirt. Love bite. The scent that's familair but in the wrong place is John Watson smelling of Sherlock Holmes’s aftershave. At home they sometimes share a deodorant, but not aftershave, but the scent is faint; indirectly worn - that is, the scent of someone who has been **kissing** a person wearing that aftershave. Combined with a love bite and that shirt, the indications are revealing. And the way Sherlock is smiling at John... And John's giving Sherlock a **look** , that fuck-me look he thinks nobody sees him doing with Mary. Christ, Sherlock’s **blushing**. This is a new thing, him and John. It’s brand new. During the night, maybe? Called out in a rush to the crime scene. _

In his normal life, in the past where this case had first happened, John had been out on a date and Sherlock had called him in. John can’t have been enjoying the date – he came along anyway. Didn’t even complain about it.

_Whenever there’s a case on while Mary’s in town, Sherlock either comes on his own or brings Nirupa. Or John comes with him while Mary goes off with Rupe. Or the four of them come. Or they bring Violet, or they did before she went up to the Mars base to work._

_What?_

_Oh, keep up. Alternative realities. Beside the point. The date that was interupted tonight was John and Sherlock's. They were snogging. Half undressed, by the look of it, and got dressed again in a hurry. What the hell was on John's shirt that he didn't... you know. Forget I asked that. I don't want to know how far through the date they got before they got the call.  
_

_You’re mad._

_You’re the one talking to yourself._ Tad huffed another laugh at that. Maybe he was a bit… mad, at present. It just seemed stupid to have a fight with himself about it. He could only theorise so far with the available data, which was that he was in some crazypants alternative reality. Or a very detailed dream of one. _Might as well enjoy it._

He peeped again at Sherlock and puffed an amused laugh. _Not jealous, Taddy you dope. He was worried I was going to notice that John’s wearing his shirt. Now he thinks that I’d never notice that in a million years. I should fuck with him a bit about that. Why don’t they want people to know? Fine. No teasing till I have the data._

Tad scrubbed his hands through his hair, took a breath and rose to his feet, which held underneath him.

“Greg, we need to get under here to find the blood and remains that have been washed away. I think we’ll find DNA evidence of more than one murder. Body parts, maybe. Other things.” Tad lifted his chin to look straight at Sherlock. What the hell. Time to have some fun. Pull a Holmes. “This is where he prepares the victims. He displays them somewhere else. There’ll be watch parts down there, from an exclusive Tag Heuer, broken in the struggle - scratches there, there and there, see, consistent height for a wrist, and if you take your magnifier over, you'll find the winder come loose. I expect we'll find a finger, too. Prints’ll show it’s Delgardo’s fixer who got on his bad side last week for making sly business deals with a rival. I’m thinking we'll find his body nailed under the bridge across the old canal offshoot from Regent’s canal - border territory between the gangs. The fixer and his contact will be strung up as a warning to the rest of his crew. This kid was the runner, meant to be up there with them."

Everyone was staring at him. Everyone. It felt awful, to have them all staring at him like that. Like he was a lunatic. Like he was a...

... a freak.

Tad feigned another swoon. "I’m sorry, Greg. I think I need to go home.” He turned on his heel and marched out into a wet London night.

 _That’s not right. It was dry the day we were called to this crime scene. Not a cloud in the sky_.

_You’re mad. I’ve gone mad._

_Shut up,_ Tad thought at his other self, and he stalked away towards the high road he could hear beyond this row of derelict shops. He found a bus route, and a bus. He caught it to a Tube station, got the train to his local station, and walked home in the rain, feeling every dreary second of the journey.

The key in his pocket didn’t fit the door. He knocked on it instead, hoping Charlotte was home from work for the day.

A woman in her 60s answered. Not his wife. Not his daughters. Mrs Eversley, he vaguely remembered. He and Charlotte had bought the house from Mrs Eversley’s son Francis after his mum had died. There’d been pictures of his mum and her wife in the hall when they’d inspected and made the offer. Charlotte had been pregnant with Nicola at the time.

“Sorry,” he said, “Wrong house.”

He stood on the street, falling into a blank panic for a second, until he clenched his fists and went for his first mantra.

_What Would John Do?  
_

John would do something practical.

Right. Back to the old house it was, just to see if that’s where this Anderson was living.

And if he really was still living with his now-longtime-ex, the bullying Lorraine, what then?

Second mantra.  _What Would Sherlock Do?_

Sherlock would gather data.

If that was where he lived in this dream-hallucination-reality, then he’d move into the spare room for tonight. Would hardly be the first time. From there he’d either wake up where he belonged, or he’d regroup, seek more data, and work on a new plan.

Tad Anderson went back to the Tube and made his way back to his old marital home.

The key fit the door perfectly.

 


	3. People Run in Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tad Anderson goes home - an old home, from 20 years ago - and makes some rapid and irreversible decisions about how he's going to conduct himself while he's lost here in the strange other world. He has no idea what he's going to do, really... until he sees a newspaper article about the Reichenbach Fall and understands that there's one thing he absolutely must not do. _He must not let it happen again._

Lorraine was in the living room watching television with the lights low and a gin and tonic held in one manicured hand. The other held a cigarette, the smoke curling slowly from the burn, past her eye -  making it squint – and to the ceiling. Her hair was darker than he remembered. Dyed, he thought. She bleached when they were together. She never went dark. But it was Lorraine. Tad would have recognised her profile anywhere.

“Back already?” The hard way she ended ‘back’, the peculiar, careless way she asked the question. That indefinable yet unmistakable tone of someone who could cast doubt, imply incompetence and register distaste in three simple syllables. He was used to that tone long before he ever met Sherlock Holmes.

“Yeah,” he said, hardly trusting his voice. Being here, hearing her, made his heart pound in a way the rest of this insane day had failed to do. “I’ve got the flu. Temperature and everything.”

“Uh-huh.” She didn’t look away from the television. He didn’t recognise the actors. People in period costume. Posh people sipping tea delicately from fine china. Servants being all po-faced in the drawing room and cranky downstairs. Lorraine always loved that sort of thing. He’d always found it tedious.

“I nearly fainted.”

“Course you did.”

She took another drag on the cigarette. He remembered all the times he’d asked her not to smoke in the house. She usually lit up right in front of him when he did.

Tad sighed. “I’ll sleep in the spare room. Don’t want you catching it.”

“Hmm.” Another drag. Some parlour maid on the screen was telling some footman off with enormous dignity.

Tad went upstairs to the spare room, and found a room filled with artificial flowers. That’s right. She’d taken that up at one stage. Flower arranging. But that had been in her workroom, downstairs, by the kitchen. He frowned, puzzled, and walked on to the bedroom.

The bed was in the wrong place. It had been over twenty years, sure, but he remembered this house. He remembered how much he’d hated it. Lorraine had overridden him when they were house-hunting.

So this place, this world, whatever it was, wasn’t exactly the same as the one he came from. Well, what he’d deduced of the John and Sherlock he’d met at the crime scene had shown that.

Tad looked around the bedroom until he found a small suitcase. He filled it with underwear, shirts. Jeans. Two suits. Four ties. Black leather shoes. Trainers. Shaving gear. Toothbrush and deodorant.

_What are you doing?_

_Leaving._

_You can’t do that!_

_You want to stay?_

_She’s my wife._

_Yeah. But she’s not mine. Took me long enough to break free of her. I’m not spending another night under her roof._

**_My_ ** _roof._

_Really? You think it’s yours? You didn’t like the kitchen, remember? You didn’t like the yard. The wiring was shit and cost a fortune to re-do but she insisted, and then she blamed you. That’s right, isn’t it? We’re remembering the same things? It’s not just me?_

The Anderson in his head fell silent. Tad finished packing – clothing, mainly. He had to squash the lid down to get it to zip shut. He couldn’t think of anything else he’d need.

Then he checked the top, right drawer where he’d always kept things that were precious to him. His first drum sticks. The CDs Gladstone’s Collar’s albums from the ‘90s. Lorraine had tried to throw them out four times.

Nothing there. Had she thrown them out again? Or had John’s teenaged band never existed in this world?

Tad tip-toed quietly down the stairs.

“What you playing at, Phillip?”

“Water,” he said in his croakiest, calling-in-sick voice, “Paracetomol.”

“Wash the glass after,” Lorraine called out, “Don’t want to catch your germs.”

He went to the kitchen, passing what had been Lorraine’s hobby room – now a spare bedroom – on the way. It looked like it was used regularly.

 _Permanently_ , said Other Anderson.

Tad poured a glass of water, sipped it, and opened the back door to regard the prim little garden and the shed. Her shed, too. He never much liked gardening.

Over the fence? he thought, or through  the front door? Last time he’d taken the fence and slunk off.

Tad put the glass on the sink, picked up the suitcase and walked down the hall to the front door again. He paused there to unhook the house keys, then turned to pitch them into the living room. Ah, bullseye, right into the bowl of crisps on the coffee table.

Lorraine looked up sharply but the front door was closing already.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

But he was gone.

*

Tad considered calling Sally, but that might be problematic, given how twenty years ago they’d been lovers. Tad was a happily married man now.

A pang, hard, heart-hurting. _Charlotte. Their girls. What’s happening at home?_

 _They’re all right_ , he said to himself. _This is just a dream. A… very vivid, very realistic dream._

Tad found a cheap room at a Tune hotel. He showered and stretched out on the bed in the pyjamas he’d brought from the house.

For a dream, this whole thing was taking a really long time.

With a sigh, he closed his eyes. Eventually, he slept.

*

_His lungs hurt and so does his hand, his fingers squeezed so tight in some fleshy vice that the joints ache._

_Sweetheart._

_He hears Charlotte._

_Taddy, please wake up. Please. It’s just the flu. You’ll be fine. Please, Taddy. Babe.  
_

_He feels safe when Charlotte holds his hand, even when she holds it so hard he fears his fingers will break._

_Beepbeep-beepbeep-beepbeep-beepbeep_

_I’m here. I’m here. Nicola will be here soon, and Teresa. We love you. I love you Taddy. Please wake up.  
_

_Beepbeep-beepbeep-beepbeep-beepbeep_

_He hears her and he feels safe surrounded by her voice and he drifts away again._

*

Tad woke up and knew that he’d slept for eight hours. Eight hours of not-dreaming sleep, inside a dream.

He sat on the edge of the bed and wondered whether he should panic yet.

_What Would John Do? What Would Sherlock Do? What Do I Do?_

Something practical. Gather data. Cope and keep going. If this all somehow meant that he wasn’t sane, then he could at least make it a predictable kind of mad.

He showered and thought about how easily he’d accepted that the Sherlock and John he’d seen at the crime scene yesterday were lovers. Sounded weird in his head now. The Sherlock and John he knew were closer than most brothers. But he could tell the difference between that kind of love and _lovers_ so easily. Was it because he knew his own Sherlock and John so well by now, or because he was so much better at reading people now? Certainly, he’d seen Molly and Greg look at each other the way those two men had. John and Mary, sure. Never John and Sherlock. Not quite like _that._

Bit of both, he decided.

He shaved, dressed, repacked his suitcase and went to the office.

“You all right?” Greg asked as Tad showed up and stowed the bag under his desk.

“Fine. Much better,” Tad said, “Any progress on the forensics for last night’s crime scene?”

“They’re on it. Sherlock confirmed your deductions, by the way. Found the watch winder. Found the bodies staked under the canal bridge too.”

Tad nodded. Greg stepped up close to him.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Not really,” said Tad. “Though… while I think of it – did you ever play guitar in a punk band.”

Greg laughed. “Me? Wanted to, but my old man hocked my guitar before I got past the fourth lesson. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“You all right, Anderson?”

“Fine. Yeah. Thanks.”

“Phil, I can see the suitcase under your desk. You finally left her, huh?”

“Yeah. But it’s good.”

“Got somewhere to stay?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve got a spare room. Lots of it, actually. She left me for the yoga teacher. He’s got a nicer place, apparently.”

“Thanks, Greg. I'd like that. Until I get on my feet.”

Greg patted him on the shoulder. “Grab some breakfast from the canteen, and we’ll talk about the case after.”

Tad went to the canteen. Beans, eggs, toast, coffee. Normal things. He could feel the texture of every bite. Every minute of every bite.

_This is my life now. This, here, with these people. This is my life._

_**My** life, thank you very much._

_Shut up._

_**You** shut up._

_**Our** life, then. This is our life now._

Inner Anderson didn’t have anything to add to that.

Tad, appetite lost, pushed the plate away. He took up the cutlery and paused in the act of placing it across the unfinished meal.

_Can I still…?_

He hadn’t been able to play for a few years, now, because of his wounded hand. But he had a brand new hand, that didn’t ache any more, and could curl properly. He’d been able to hold the fork normally for a change.

Tad gripped the fork in his left hand, the knife in his right, and tapped out a few tentative beats on the edge of the plate. He tapped a more complicated one.

He grinned.

Taking a moment to rearrange salt and pepper shakers, the metal square stuffed with paper napkins and the ceramic vase with a single plastic daffodil in it, Tad flipped the implements over so the handles faced out and let rip with a tabletop drum solo. He moved his shoulders into it, put on his best hardass drummer face and broke into the final verse:

 _Alone is not a trophy_  
_And lonely isn't strong_  
_This ghost’s alive and breathing_  
_This ghost is turning into me_

He finished with a flourish and laughed, caught between ruefulness and delight. John’s songs turned out to have more than one meaning; but at least he could drum again.

“What’s that song?” Sally, coffee in one hand, was smiling through puzzlement at him.

“Oh, just something I picked up,” he told her. “How’ve you been?”

The puzzled furrow of her brow deepened. “Fine. Since you last saw me yesterday. Are you all right, Phil?”

 _It’s Tad._ “Yeah.”

“The Boss said you’d left your wife.”

“Yeah.”

Still perplexed, her smile grew tentative. “Did you want to… my place…”

“Thanks, Sally, but no.”

“No?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry what?”

“Greg’s offered me a bed at his place.”

“You’re going to stay with Greg. Not me?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

Tad took a deep breath. Blew it out slowly.

“You _are_ ,” Sally said, offended, shocked. “You’re breaking up with me.”

_What are you **doing**?_

_Shut up._

“Yes,” Tad said, “I’m sorry. But I’m not what you want, really. We had fun. We’re good mates. But… you’re not in love with me. Not deep-down, passionate, build-a-life kind of love. And I want…” _Charlotte._ “…someone who loves me like that.”

“Phil.”

“And it’s Tad. Thaddeus, actually. Thaddeus Phillip Anderson. Tad.”

Sally slammed the coffee onto the table but managed to not dump the hot liquid into Tad’s lap. He figured he’d got off lightly, but then, Sally had never scared him. She was strong, and he’d loved that about her, and she was funny and she was protective. She’d never been mean. Well, not to him. Sherlock Holmes was another story, but that was a complicated thing. A thing of the distant past, too, in his other life.

Tad didn’t want to think about his other life. Not until he knew if he could get back to it.

He rose and went to the bathroom to piss. He washed his hands and stared at his reflection. So young. He used to be such a shallow twat. So scared of everything. That wasn't him anymore.

He ran his palm across his jaw and cheek. _Time for a beard,_ he thought. _Look a bit more like an adult. You’ve got a face like a first year uni student._

“Don’t. It’ll look ridiculous.”

Tad glanced across the glass and saw Sherlock Holmes reflected in it. Tad rubbed his knuckles against his jaw and laughed. “Not too hard to deduce that one,” he said good-naturedly, “Got anything more obscure?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Tad. “You skipped breakfast. You broke up with Donovan. You’ve left your wife.”

“Top score,” said Tad, “Was that deducing stuff or did you talk to Greg and bump into Sally?” Sherlock arched an eyebrow. Tad laughed. “Thought so. You get one more free shot, then I get a turn.”

Sherlock’s great shaggy brows drew hard in together. “You’re different. Extremely different. I would almost say a different person.”

Tad held his breath.

“Leaving your wife agrees with you.”

Tad exhaled sharply. Somehow he’d thought… he’d hoped… Sherlock Holmes might deduce what had happened to him, and could tell him what the hell was going on. But Sherlock was a detective, not a psychatrist. Not a magician or a miracle worker, no matter how it looked. How on earth could he possible know?

“It does. My turn.” Tad peered at him. No marks under the collar, his own shirt, hair the usual artful mess. Cuffs immaculate. Shirt buttoned up one higher than his regular fashion - perhaps hiding more hickeys. Oh, ha, there, a short blond hair on his collar. Another caught in the button of his suit cuff. The places where one catches hairs when one has been kissing a short, blond person, with your arms wrapped around their shoulders, your hand in their hair.

Tad stepped up to Sherlock and plucked off both the hair at the collar and the one at the cuff.

“If you want to keep it secret,” said Tad, “You need to be more careful. My lips are sealed, though. I won’t even tell Greg if you don’t want me to.”

Sherlock Holmes looked utterly shocked. Tad kind of liked the look on him.

“Laters!” said Tad chirpily, and he stepped jauntily past Sherlock and went back to work.

At his desk, Tad found the _National_. Someone had left the paper open on a story for him.

**\--Hero of the Reichenbach--**

A photograph of Sherlock and John. The story of the recovery of the Reichenbach painting. The start of that whole thing with Richard Brook.

_Oh God. Moriarty. Oh shit, i_ _t’s happening again._

_What is?_

_All of it. The child kidnappings. St Bart’s.  Jim Fucking Moriarty. Sherlock Away and what that did to John. It’s all happening again. Moriarty’s trying to destroy Sherlock **again**._

_Who’s Jim Fucking Moriarty?_

Tad ignored the other voice. He had a lot of thinking to do. A lot of planning.

Because he'd be _damned_ if he'd let Moriarty get away with doing this to them all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tad drums and sings part of the John Watson/Collared song [This Ghost.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/426621)


	4. Sit and Listen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tad has made a new version of his deduction checklist, but still needs to call Sherlock in on a case. Then he has his own secret investigation to get on with - working out how to stop Jim Moriarty from driving Sherlock Holmes to disgrace and pretend suicide. In the middle of that investigation, he discovers a name he knows attached to a face he doesn't. Is this the clue he needs?

Sally decided to speak to him again after Tad’s third night at Greg’s place. She brought coffee to his desk for him, and a wry quirk of the mouth.

“You all right?”

“Yes,” Tad replied, aware that his tone was still tinged with melancholy. He’d never been able to conceal much, and certainly not from Sally.

“We’re still broken up?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said, and put a paper bag from Borough Market beside the paper cup.

Tad took it up and inhaled like it was ambrosia. “Honeycomb doughnuts from Bread Ahead! God, I miss these things!”

“Well, they’re right there, every day,” said Sally with a quizzical grin, then she shrugged. “You don’t pass it now though, do you?”

Bread Ahead, as Tad had known it, had been closed for ten years. Before then, he’d gone out of his way to get their baked goods. “Greg’s local bakery is pitiful,” he said. The tip of his tongue snuck out to lick the honeycomb protruding from the peace offering. He stopped, tongue stuck out, when he saw her grinning at him.

“We had good times,” she said.

“We did,” he agreed, “You were my best friend.”

“Still am, I hope.”

Tad didn’t know whether or not to feel sad that it was no longer true. He rarely saw Sally any more, and hadn’t since she’d left the Met to join Mycroft Holmes at MI5, though there’d been a time when their kids were young where they saw each other more. Charlotte was his best friend now, and missing her was a weight in the middle of his chest. But Sally had been all he had for the longest time. And for all he knew, next to Greg, she might be the only friend he had here.

“Of course,” he said, and smiled, and offered her a bite of the doughnut. She brought out a second paper bag – her own favourite was the custard doughnut – and waggled it at him.

Half an hour later they were both at a puzzling crime scene; not one he knew at all from his other life. Tad pulled out the checklist he’d spent the last three days reconstructing in a brand new notebook. (Inner Anderson had queried the whole process; Tad had started singing Collared songs and tapping out rhythms on the desk with his pens to encourage him to shut up.)

Sally kept giving him odd looks now, as did Greg. Tad chewed his pencil and scribbled notes on a blank page, trying to get the dots to connect, but it wasn’t coming together. The body on the floor wasn’t providing enough information.

“Call Sherlock,” he said.

“What?” asked Greg.

“ _What_?” demanded Sally, thunderstruck.

“Call him. He’ll know how it fits. I can’t make it gel, and his kid’s missing, so…” he looked up, sensing everyone’s incredulous stares. “Photos on the wall,” he pointed, “The diary said this was his weekend with the daughter, and she’s not here.”

“She could be with the mother,” said Sally, “We haven’t been able to contact her yet…”

“Could be,” Tad conceded, “But the bathroom bin shows someone in this house has their period, and Drew here has a boyfriend, remember?” The boyfriend had been the one to call it in, and was beside himself with grief to have come by to find Drew dead. “Neither of them is trans, so it’s not either of them. I figure it’s the daughter, and she’s not here.”

“You think she killed her old man?”

Tad scratched at his half-grown beard. “Maybe. No. I don’t think so. She didn’t even have time to unpack. She must have her bag with her. Sherlock will have a better idea.”

Greg made the call and fifteen minutes later, there were Sherlock and John. No kiss-and-telltales today, Tad noted.

Sherlock began his grand sweep of the crime scene. Sally watched, avidly, bitterly. The way she used to. Tad knew why. She’d been so impressed with Sherlock Holmes the very first time, but it had all soured. She’d worked so hard – black and a woman and a detective, a combination that even in 2006 when she’d met Holmes was still a challenge – and this posh git had swanned in with all his white genius privilege and left her investigation in tatters. He’d solved it all right, but Sherlock had been careless with Sally’s efforts in the process.

They’d all changed a lot. Sherlock – his Sherlock, the one he’d grown to know over two decades – was more considerate now. Still an arrogant git, obviously. Tad grinned to himself. He’d cut his own tongue out before he admitted to anyone how fond he was of that twat.

“Curious,” announced Sherlock after several minutes, “A soundproof music room full of instruments…”

“… that have never been played,” said Tad, “I know.”

Sherlock glared at him.

“Not by him at any rate,” Tad expanded. “I mean, there’s no wear on the drum kit, the guitars, the keyboards, nothing. And maybe they’re all new, but he’s never played a note.”

“And how do you deduce that?” demanded Sherlock, though he seemed intrigued.

“Calluses,” said Tad. He took up Sherlock’s own hand and indicated the distinctive marks on his fingers created by regular use of violin and bow. “Any muso worth the name would have them. There’d be evidence of skin on the guitar strings, on the fret at least if he used a pick. Drummers have them…” he released Sherlock’s hand and indicated on his own hand, though this Anderson’s body lacked them. He’d never drummed. “Keyboard players here and here. So I don’t get it. What are the instruments for? Why did he put so much money into a music room and all these instruments if he doesn’t play a note? He’s been garrotted, see…” he gestured to the victim’s throat, “Guitar string. An A probably, judging by the width at the shallower ends. The daughter…”

“Taken, yes. His business partners.”

“But why?”

“She’s the musician.”

“Really?”

“Picks in the spare room. Not the boyfriend’s. she plays bass.”

“How do you figure?”

“Balance of probabilities. Photo shows she’s Goth, tough. T-shirt with Peaches on it…”

“Why not lead guitar then?”

“Bass is easier to play.”

“Greg would say fuck you for that one.”

“Would I?”

Tad blinked at him. “Ah… not you. Another. Another Greg I know. Bass player. Very good. Does a lot of…” Tad kind of air-guitared at him, “Complicated stuff. Even Sh… Shaun thinks he does a good job, and he’s a picky bastard, though pretty much anything that’s good for J-Joel meets with everyone’s approval.”

There they went. Giving him that ‘freak’ look again. Except Sherlock. He was studying Tad intensely. Tad lifted his chin and submitted to the scrutiny with quiet confidence. That whole ‘reading your life story from your tie and your stubble’ thing didn’t frighten him like it used to. Sherlock couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know himself; not any more. If anything, he was hoping that Sherlock might tell him something new.

Sherlock didn’t. Instead, he stalked over to the instruments and scoured them with his laser eyes. Tad walked over to stand by John, to watch.

John looked sideways at him. “You feeling all right?”

“Learning,” said Tad shortly, “There’s always something to learn. He always looks like he’s pulling this stuff out of the air but give him ten minutes and he can’t help explaining it. Then I take notes and I know more for next time.” He flipped his notebook to a fresh page. “I can put up with some smugness for the knowledge.” Tad noticed John’s raised eyebrow, and the blue eye under it assessing him cautiously.

In another life, John looked at him like a friend. Tad missed that, too.

_You in love with **all** these dickheads in your precious other life?_

Tad sighed. _Try to learn something. Stop being a twat and just **try**._

“Anderson,” snapped Sherlock, “Your theory?”

Tad sighed again. “I’d say drugs concealed in the instruments, but they’d be easily found. I had a look and there’s no residue, so anything would have been packed up tight. But again, it’s too easy to find. I thought maybe diamonds then, or some other contraband, but it keeps hitting the same problem. Maybe he got the idea from his guitarist daughter; maybe she’s the mastermind, who knows, but it’s all to do with this stuff. If we can work out what, maybe we can work out why they took her, and where to find her. That’s why I asked Greg to call you. I can’t always do it. I can see a lot more than I used to but I can’t always make it string together. That’s what you do. Take it all and make it make sense”

He wasn’t prepared for Sherlock’s thoughtful consideration.

Three notes played in the room. Sherlock tapping on the middle C of the keyboard.

“Do you play?” Sherlock asked.

“Not the keyboard.”

“Drums,” said Sherlock, “You were confident showing me the correct callus locations for a drummer.”

“I’ve drummed. Not for a while.”

“Show me.”

Tad had learned years ago to not question Sherlock’s bizarre requests. Usually it was just an excuse for the git to show off. So Tad planted his butt on the stool, took up the sticks and tapped a few beats out. He frowned. He riffed across the snare, the floor tom, the high hats and the crash cymbal.

“Weird,” he said.

He got the bass rhythm and went through the whole drum part for Battlefield, across the mid and high toms as well as the ride cymbal. He ended with a flourish and a huge grin.

“Well, that was rubbish,” said Tad, and he began to laugh. “Clever bastards. Her idea, do you think?”

“What?” John’s brow was furrowed.

“Couldn’t you hear it?” Tad asked, and then remembered that this John Watson wasn’t a musician and maybe he couldn’t.

John – this world’s John – surprised him. “Rubbish, like you said. This drum kit’s a mess. The sound’s off.” To Sherlock’s raised eyebrow, John said, “Harry used to play.”

“Hmm.” Tad was kneeling in front of the bass, fiddling with a lug. It snapped off and he held it up between thumb and forefinger. The outside was coated in thick silver paint. The inside was chalky white. He touched the tip of his tongue to it and pulled a face. “Eugh. That’s nasty. Can’t taste too good when they separate out the crystals.”

“Unless it’s for injecting,” said John thoughtfully, “it might explain the high number of overdoses being reported, if the supply is full of that many impurities. Can’t be easy to get the drugs out of the… what is the agent there? Plaster?”

Tad saw Sherlock looking at John like he was made of honeycomb doughnuts. Tad was annoyed that he’d done most of the work and didn’t get looked at like that.

“What?” said John, but he was giving the same eat-you-up look back to Sherlock. Probably just as well he wasn’t on the receiving end of it, Tad revised. It was intense.

“Not plaster,” said Sherlock, “White modelling clay. It’s not the daughter’s idea, it’s the ex-wife’s. Did you see the plaster models in the living room? Twee for this flat’s décor. You remarked on his excellent taste.”

“I said it didn’t seem a Laura Ashley florals kind of house.”

“Same thing,” said Sherlock.

Tad was left with forensics to tidy up while Sally and Greg took off with the team, trailing after John and Sherlock, of course. The girl was leverage to get to the mother, of course. What a mess.

*

Sally came in a few hours later, three perps handcuffed together. One Goth guitarist (bass) saved, and now in the care of her father’ boyfriend, a lovely fellow who adored her like his own. They were crying together in a room before their witness statements could be taken. The girl’s mother was in custody and spilling like an overfilled, overexcited pot of popcorn. Tad congratulated Sally, finished his preliminary report on the scene in advance of the lab reports and then took out his new file. Ten pages thick already.

Twenty years ago was a long time, and there was a lot to remember. He didn’t know everything. Some things he’d only learned later and wasn’t entirely sure where they fit into the scheme of things. He’d have to revise the timeline as he went.

The return of the Reichenbach Fall painting was not the first item on the list. No. First was all those horrific bombings from the year before that. He’d had to research on the Internet as well as internal files for all of those. Some had varied from the history he knew. But that was it. Moriarty’s first known appearance. Known to him, anyway.  Not much for the year after that, though he’d pencilled in a few possibilities. Sally – his Sally, or rather Mycroft’s Sally – had referred to one or two things in passing a few years ago.

The kidnapping of that politician was meant to be next. In a few weeks, give or take, if the parallels remained close enough, there’d be the triple break in and that smug little Irish bastard would go on trial, and get off after threatening the witnesses via their hotel video-on-demand.

After that, the kids would be kidnapped and poisoned. Brainwashed to scream at the sight of Sherlock Holmes, and though Holmes was an intimidating git who had made Tad want to scream more than once in his life – well, that wasn’t right. Sherlock actually liked kids. Got on well with them, for the most part. Adored his own with a ferocity that matched his fierce fraternal love for John Watson. Sherlock was great with all the kids, really. Nicola and Teresa when they were small too.

So much worse happened after that, but it was the way Moriarty had turned Sherlock into a monster to those children that rankled the most, that struck Tad as the cruellest thing. Sherlock Holmes was a lot of things, but he would never, ever hurt a kid. The old softie.

The thing to do, Tad decided, was to stake out some of these scenes before the event. See what he could find out.

He took up his coat, left a message for the forensics team that he had a site visit to follow up, and he took his new file with him.

*

The US ambassador’s family was surrounded by all kinds of security as a matter of course, even down at their posh boarding school in Surrey. Tad, dressed casually and hunched in a voluminous coat, sat inside pub down the road from St Aldates and went over the maps he’d drawn for himself. In his experience, security agencies were pretty damned efficient. Sally certainly was. How Moriarty had winkled the ambassador’s kids out from under them had never been satisfactorily explained. One of the two guards had been shot dead, and the other hadn’t seen a thing. Tad had to assume the ignorant one had either been above reproach or questioned with unpleasant intensity to rule him out.

He checked his file again. Max, seven, and Claudette, nine, had been whisked out of their boarding school after the rest of the boarders had gone home for the break. Poor beggars had been left behind while their parents did ambassadorial things.

Tad sipped his pint and tapped a rhythm on the table with his pen. The kids, he remembered, had been well versed in security protocols and wouldn’t have gone off with just anyone. The school had been bolted up, no sign of a break in. Tad had shown up at the crime scene himself after Sherlock had first viewed it. The Linseed oil, the footsteps, floor wax. A molecule of glycerol. Mercury. Chalk, asphalt, brisk dust, vegetation – rhododendron ponticum. The things that had convinced Tad and Sally that Sherlock had set up the whole kidnapping himself.

Tad still coloured with shame when he remembered that. When he remembered what they’d done. In good faith, maybe, but they’d been so wrong.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mary Morstan!”

Tad’s head jerked up at the name, his eyes wide open, as he looked around the pub for Mary. The hope surging in his heart caught up with the thought in his head that it couldn’t possibly be her, and even if it was, she was the Mary Morstan of this world. Not his.

But there was no sign of a short, dark-haired, super-smart engineer with a cheeky sense of humour.

“Well I am a nurse, Gus.”

Tad’s eyes swivelled towards the woman at the bar. Short, yes, but blond. More heavily built than the Mary Morstan he knew. Not her. Just a coincidence.

 _The universe is rarely so lazy_ , came Sherlock’s drawl into his memory.

“That’ll explain it,” the publican said warmly, “You nearly done with the school?”

“Yes, term's up in a few weeks and then it’s no more sniffles and scabbed knees for me! I’m off on hols to New Zealand!”

“Sounds glamorous. Say hello to the hobbits for me. After your usual, Mary?”

“I’m thinking a glass of champagne, Gus. It’s my birthday.”

Tad frowned. He mentally double checked the date. It _was_ , he realised. It was Mary’s birthday today. She and John would probably go out for dinner, if she was in London. They’d make a call to the Mars station to talk to Violet. Maybe there’d be a party. In the old days, Collared might have played. There was that year John wrote her that song about the birds. _Swift._ He liked that song, though he was very happy that his own little bird liked to stay at home with him all year long.

_Charlotte. You and your bloody Charlotte._

Tad ignored Inner Anderson and watched this new Mary Morstan closely. His heart lurched a bit when she turned and looked straight at him. A lopsided and challenging grin.

“Eyes off my arse, if you want to keep them,” she said in a cheerful voice that frightened the fuck out of him.

“Sorry. You reminded me of someone. I thought… sorry. Mistaken identity.”

The woman’s cool regard made him glad there was a table between her and his testicles. Looked like she could snip ‘em off with a freezing look. Then her face softened.

“No harm done,” she said.

He nodded and raised his pint in a salute. Friendly gesture. I’m harmless, I’m harmless, I’m harmless.

“You could pay for my champagne if you like, to make it up to me.”

“Ah… sure.”

“She like you, this friend you mistook me for?”

He thought of John’s Mary. “Yeah. She’s the wife of a mate of mine. She’s really good for him.Makes him happy. I wondered what she was doing out here without him, whether she was at an engineering conference out here or something. It’s… ah… it’s his birthday next week. We’re meant to be working on a surprise party for him, even though he hates those things. But… like I said. Mistaken identity.”

“It’s my birthday today,” she said, still cool.

“I heard you say.”

She lifted the bottle of champagne from the counter, toasted him with it. “Thanks for the present.” Then she sauntered into the back parlour with it.

Tad paid – for his pint and the bottle of champagne – as fast as he could and took the first train back to London.

It took a few hours to find everything he was looking for: birth records matching those of the Mary Morstan he knew. Then the other records. Then the news report on the tragedy.

He cried when he found it. He couldn’t help it.

The Mary Morstan he’d known was born on this date 28 years ago. And she’d died at ten years old. She’d climbed out of her bedroom window – some argument with her mother and step-dad, she’d intended to retrieve a confiscated teddy bear that her father had given her before his death. It was all there in the associated newspaper report. Thank goodness for the internet, eh? Everything there, if you looked hard enough.

_Mary’s dead. She’s dead._

_She’s not dead._ Inner Anderson sounded like he was trying to be kind. _She’s back in your world, having a birthday dinner with that Perfect John Watson you’re always trying to be like, when you’re not trying to be like that bastard Holmes._

 _Shut up_. He scrubbed tears from his eyes.

_I’m just trying to tell you that you don’t even know this Mary Morstan. Yours is alive and well. And this one…_

_This one is… using her identity?_

_There’s more than one Mary Morstan in the world._

_Born on this date? It’s not that common a name. The coincidence would be remarkable. And she’s terrifying. She’s like those agents Sally works with._ He swallowed. _She’s like Sally now. Even more like her scary husband. She’s got eyes like his. Like she can skin you with a look._

_Maybe she is a spook. But what can **you** do?_

_Get a sketch artist to draw this Mary Morstan, and see if I can get a match to find out who she really is._

Perhaps he would find a link between this not-Mary and Jim Moriarty. Perhaps he could stop all of this before it properly began.

 


	5. Look Right Through Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are very different in this world. Some things are changing from the one Tad knew. But he can't work out how to warn anyone about Moriarty without looking like a lunatic. And the one person he finally gets to warn doesn't seem to believe him.

Greg’s sofa bed in the spare room was comfortable enough, and Tad made an effort to be an effortless house guest. He did his share of cooking and cleaning. Lorraine came to yell at him once. He pretended he wasn’t home for a while, then gathered his courage up and went out to talk to her. She yelled very loudly. He kept calm. It was surprising how easy that was to do now that he wasn’t afraid of her any more. She had no more hold on him. Her disdain, her contempt, her threats, all… nothing.

He didn’t even hate her. He knew what a disappointment he’d been to her. They should never have married. She’d meant to mould him into the husband she wanted. He’d meant to let her. A shame, perhaps, that he turned out not to be mouldable into the shape he wanted.

He’d grown all the same, once he’d escaped from the vicious pruning shears of her tongue. In his own world, she’d been much happier too, once she’d accepted that her reclamation project wasn’t coming back for another cruel bout of cutting back. Maybe this Lorraine would be too.

 _Don’t count on it_ , said Inner Anderson. His tone was full of relief though. He was glad it was over.

 _People can change_ , Tad told him. _With the right motivation and room to grow, people can._

Tad slept like a log on Greg’s sofa bed, and never remembered his dreams.

*

_His lungs hurt less; his back aches. His mouth and jaw, too, and there is pressure at the corner. On his lip. There's something pressing on his tongue. He hears mechanical breathing in time with his own breathing. He doesn't know what it is.  
_

_Charlotte holds his hand. Nicola holds his hand, and Teresa. They talk to him. They sing to him. They kiss his brow and his fingers. They try not to cry._

_Greg says, Don’t you worry about your girls. Molly is looking out for them. Just till you wake up. Wake up, Tad._

_Sherlock talks about the different stages of coma, and relative likelihoods of recovery. It’s only been three days, Sherlock says in a crisp, no-nonsense voice. Prognosis is good, provided you wake up soon. Do wake up soon. This is unsettling everybody. And I’ve been persuaded to deliver your lectures until you do, and I cannot fathom how you tolerate the fatuous ignorance of your colleagues, let alone your students. I’ve left some corrections on your notes. Not many. They are… surprisingly not appalling._

_John says, Come on mate. Come on back. It’s time, now._

_Taddy, says Sally, I’ve asked Mycroft to bring in a specialist. You’ll be all right._

_Sally holds his hand._

_Tad breathes in and breathes out and breathes in and breathes out and he aches all over and he sleeps and drifts and drifts and drifts away._

_*_

The police artist’s picture of Mary Morstan found four potential matches. Two were confirmed in prison, the third didn’t look at all right. The fourth, which did, was of an American who’d died three years previously. One Alice Georgina Ratcliffe Abernathy. A dead end.

The politician was kidnapped and returned to his family within a day, and the papers were full of Sherlock’s name and picture.

Then there was the Ricoletti case, and Sherlock's teasing-grateful reward from the Met. Tad traded grins with Sally at the doorway as Sherlock pulled on the deerstalker, scowling. Tad noticed how John touched Sherlock’s wrist briefly, and the tension melted from Sherlock’s posture. His mouth quirked, like he suddenly found he could see the funny side.

Tad glanced away from them to find Sally looking at him.

“What changed your mind about him?” she asked earnestly.

_We helped Moriarty ruin him and then we had to review every case he’d ever worked on and we found out we were wrong; and the only way to make up for what I’d done was to prove that it was possible by learning how to do it._

“I figured if what he did was real it could be replicated,” said Tad, “And it turns out it’s real.”

“You’re never going to win his approval, you know.”

It had never been about winning Sherlock’s approval. John’s forgiveness, maybe. In the end, Tad had earned self-respect and that was better than either.

“It’s not about him, it’s about me,” said Tad. “It’s about being better than I used to be. Making up for mistakes.”

Sally studied him and when she smiled it was with warmth. Maybe a little pride.

_She still loves me._

_I’m not in love with her, though._

_Maybe **I** am._

_Are you?_

Inner Anderson was silent. Then he changed the subject. _That checklist. It works._

_I know it works._

_He’s not wrong, is he? I’m terrible at my job._

_You’re not. Well, a bit. You let him rattle you too much. You doubt yourself, and then end up believing people like Lorraine when they tell you you’re rubbish. You need to stay calm. Be methodical. Be open to ideas. You’ll get there._

_You’re already there. You’re never leaving, are you?_

_I want to._

_But here you are._

“Tad?”

Sally had finally stopped calling him Phil. “Hmm?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Good.” He watched John and Sherlock leave. “I have to go out for a little while. Chase up some lab reports with Molly…”

“Molly?”

“Dr Hooper at St Bart’s. I’ll be back soon.”

*

Tad didn’t know what he was going to say to them, but he had to say something. Even if it sounded mad, he had to say something.

It didn’t help that Sherlock and John kept regarding him with a kind of bemused wariness. They were more careful now – he hardly ever saw evidence that they were more than flatmates. Except he saw it everywhere. Sherlock was right – once you knew a thing it was impossible to unknow it.

Like the fact that black sedans picked Greg up from time to time, and dropped him off again down the street from Greg’s apartment. It had taken Tad days to notice, and now he noticed all the time. The sedan and how Greg looked when he came back. Neater, actually. Often freshly showered. Smiling and more relaxed.

The only person Tad knew who had black sedans on call was Mycroft Holmes. And once he knew that, he saw the auburn hair on Greg’s sleeve, three different times; and just that once, the way Greg smiled when Sherlock was bitching about his older brother.

Tad had not expected that. He’d assumed this Greg was as straight as the one he knew. Now he wondered if his Greg was necessarily as straight as all that. And _Mycroft Holmes_? Sally’s scary husband?

Another thing he couldn’t unknow was what it felt like to be Sherlock Holmes. The way people stared at him when he deduced things at crime scenes now. Some of that was because he’d seen these crime scenes before, and couldn’t help showing off a bit, making pronouncements that weren’t yet supported by evidence. Then the evidence would come in. Saved time, caught villains, but god, the looks he got. He had never felt so acutely akin with Sherlock Bloody Holmes, and how lonely it was. And Tad didn’t have a John Watson to look at him like he was amazing. Sally looked at him like he was playing tricks, or did until he showed her the checklist. Then she decided he wasn’t a freak, just organised.

 _It’s **hard**_ , he wanted to tell her. _It’s taken me twenty years to get this good at what he did easily right from the start. I don’t have his memory. I don’t think as quickly as he does. I work ten times as hard as he does to be not quite half as good, but I’m not a genius. That doesn’t make me not amazing. I **work** for this._

Never mind. He hadn’t done it for the kudos. And Charlotte knew how hard he worked. Charlotte thought he was bloody amazing.

On reaching the door of 221B Baker Street, Tad opened the unlocked door – _they really need to lock that thing_ – and went upstairs. Out of old habit – it had long been a game to see if he could get to their door without them realising he was there, a feat he’d only managed once – he stepped over the stair that creaked, and on the edge of the one that squeaked if you stood in the middle, and then stepped softly down the landing to their door.

“We need to be more careful,” he heard John say.

“It’s an _ear hat_ , John… and what do you mean, more careful?”

“You’re not just a private detective any more. You’re famous. The press will turn on you.”

“It really bothers you. What people say.”

“Of course it bothers me.”

“Our names aren’t linked. We’ve been very careful.”

“Sherlock, _Anderson_ has noticed.”

“Yes. He’s coming along strangely well. He’s been paying attention, apparently. Inconvenient timing, certainly, but I don’t think he’s in league with Moriarty.”

“That’s really not what I’m worried about.”

Tad raised his hand to knock, but then…

“Ah. I see. You’re worried about people _finding out_.” Sherlock’s tone was sour.

“No, you git. I want to _tell_ people about us. I’m tired of having to keep it secret.”

Unmistakable sounds of kissing, then. Tad wondered how Sherlock had missed the fact that someone was outside their door. Though he supposed they were preoccupied, and it wasn’t like he’d arrived in a car. He’d been so quiet up the stairs that he imagined they thought Mrs Hudson had a visitor.

Sherlock spoke softly. Unhappily. “You know why. It would make you a target.”

“I’m already a target, Sherlock.”

“It’ll make you _more_ of one. He said he’d burn the heart out of me, John. What do you imagine that means?”

“I was a soldier. I can take care of myself.”

“And he’s a dangerous lunatic. It’s one thing for him to know you’re my friend. If he knew you were… what you are to me… I can’t risk it. You may not be able to imagine what he’s capable of, but I can.”

“I’ve seen what obsessed fundamentalists can do, Sherlock. I can imagine what he can do to _you_.”

“John. Please. Low profile until this is done. Afterwards we can have a parade, if you want. I’ll book a video screen at Piccadilly Circus to propose to you on it…”

John’s gentle laugh, more of a giggle, rose up. “Daft git. So you’re not going to tell me what you’re planning?”

“It’s safest this way. Trust me.”

“I do.”

The sounds beyond the door progressed beyond kissing. A voice that was unmistakably Sherlock’s moaned, and John’s voice encouraged him.

Tad crept back downstairs, avoiding the noisy steps, and left.

_Well, who’d have thought?_

_They love each other_ , Tad told Inner Anderson severely. _They always have, but now it’s… all the other kinds of love, too. And I’m not going to let that psycho little shit get between them. I won’t let it happen again._

_This isn’t like you and Charlotte. You being separated from her isn't like those two being separated from each other.  
_

_It is._

It was while he was arguing with himself about love and his own motivations that a black sedan pulled up, a man in a dark suit bundled him inside, and he found himself kidnapped by Greg Lestrade’s unlikely boyfriend.

*

Tad faced off against the mysterious Mycroft Holmes in an underground carpark, and decided that Sally’s Mycroft wasn’t half as terrifying as Greg’s Mycroft.

“What I would like to know,” the terrifying Mycroft was saying, “Is how you came to be looking for Alice Abernathy.”

“I w-wasn’t,” said Tad. His teeth were chattering a little, and he couldn’t convince himself it was just because it was cold in here. “I w-was looking for Mary Morstan.”

“And what do you know about this Miss Morstan?”

“She’s a school n-nurse. At St Ald-date’s. Where the US ambassador sends his k-kids. I think she’s g-going to kidnap them in the break.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“She’s not who she says she is.”

Mycroft Holmes inclined his head. “No. She isn’t.” He smiled. It was really, truly unpleasant. “Who do you think she is?”

“She w-works for James Moriarty. I think.”

“How do you come by this information?”

Tad tried to work out how to answer in a way that wouldn’t get him locked up. “I… I knew the family. Mary Morstan’s real family. When we were kids. She fell out of a window and died.” It still upset him, thinking of that. Warm, funny, smart, cheeky Mary. Where was Nirupa, in this world? Was she all right?

“Go on.”

“And… I overheard this woman, and I recognised her name. And… it’s not a common name, Morstan. And I got curious. So I… looked into it. Into her. But… nothing.”

“That’s right. You found nothing. Alice Abernathy is dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Except for the woman who looks like her who is a nurse at St Aldates.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s cleared that up.”

Tad dared to exhale in a slight show of relief.

“Now onto Moriarty.”

Shit.

“What do you know about him?”

Tad stared at Mycroft and wondered what to say. How to say it? He wondered if he was looking at the only man who might be able to stop him.

“H-he’s a c-consulting criminal. He hires out his genius brain to plot perfect crimes. He was behind the bombings last year. He had something to do with Irene Adler.” A bit of a guess, that, but things had been let slip from time to time, and he’d learned how to pay attention. “He’s setting a trap for Sherlock.”

“You seem rather in the know, for a simple forensics officer.”

 _When in doubt, shut up_ , Sherlock had once told him. He was being a rude prick at the time, but there was merit in it. Tad shut up.

Mycroft’s phone rang. His expression, incredibly, softened. “Yes, he’s here. No. Not at present.” His eyes cut to Tad, then away. “In one piece? For now. All right. Tonight? Yes, I can make room in my schedule. Photographs, you say? In the hat? And you?” The phone pinged and Mycroft held the screen away. His eyes grew human and he even laughed as he pressed the phone to his ear again. “I would say that it was a very flattering angle, but I’ve seen the original and am aware there is no exaggeration.”

Tad could have sworn he could hear Greg’s voice laughing low and sultry. Mycroft listened a little longer.

“All right. If you insist.” Mycroft hung up from the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “I cannot work you out, Sergeant Thaddeus Anderson. But I have my eye on you.”

Tad pressed his lips together and summoned all his courage. “Keep it on Moriarty. He’s trying to destroy Sherlock. And Sherlock’s going to let him, to protect John.”

“I’ll make a note.”

A short woman arrived just as Mycroft turned on his heel and left. She was peering into a phone, sending messages. She held the door open for him, with a distracted polite smile, and he slid into the back seat.

The car let him out near a Tube stop, so Tad caught it back to Baker Street, but Sherlock and John were either not answering ( _still in bed, maybe,_ smirked Inner Anderson) or out.

Tad went back to Greg’s place. Greg was gone. Well, obviously.

Tad showered and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. A pretty damned fruitless day after all. He needed to burn off some energy, he decided. Switch off his head and let his subconscious mind stew for a while. The best he knew how to do that was dancing.

*

Tad liked dancing at gay clubs, mostly because it was a lot less weird for a guy to be dancing there all on his own.  One of the few perks of being in this other life was being in this thirties again, with the energy and limberness that entailed. His body, in this world, wasn’t as fit as Tad had been at 33, but he was a hell of a lot fitter than Anderson at 53.

Lights flashed; the beat came up through the floor, through his shoes and feet and calves, to his hips, ribs and arms. Tad Anderson was a bloody good dancer. He’d even been Sherlock’s dance partner on a case, when John had twisted his knee and couldn’t go to the dance school with Sherlock like he’d planned. Sherlock was a git but he was a git who knew how to bloody move. He’d even let Tad choreograph.

Tad was smiling about that to himself.

_You danced with His Fucking Highess?_

_Yes. He knows how to follow, which you wouldn’t think to look at him. He’s very good._

_And your Sherlock dances with your John, even though they’re not boyfriends?_

_Sometimes. Not for recreation, usually. The four of them go out though. All of us, sometimes. He dances with Rupe, then. Sometimes with John. They’ve got a bit of a … polyamorous thing going on. It’s kind of sweet once you get used to the idea._

Tad scandalised Inner Anderson by dancing with an older, bearded man who came up to him on the dance floor.

 _It’s just dancing,_ Tad said. _And he’s good._ And Tad felt a little less alone, moving with him to the music.

When his dance partner tried to kiss him, later, Tad shook his head. “Sorry,” he shouted above the music, “Just dancing tonight.”

The well-mannered bear nodded, danced a little longer and then moved off to find another dance partner.

Greg wasn’t at the apartment when Tad returned. Tad hoped this Iceman Mycroft was treating him well.


	6. All around me are familiar faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all of Tad Anderson's efforts, it looks like fate is unfolding, an inevitability he can't circumvent. Triple break-ins. The trial happens. Moriarty is on the loose. A child is kidnapped after all. Sherlock is arrested. Tad doesn't know why he has to stop it happening again, but he's driven beyond reason. Because what if this time, in this place, Sherlock really dies?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm away on holidays next week, and I'm trying to finish this before I leave. I'm working very rapidly so please forgive any errors!

Inner Anderson complained initially about the new gym routine Tad instigated. All that running. All those weights. That damned _stretching_. He was slightly more forgiving when Tad, who went dancing as often as he could, was able to do the splits for the first time in fifteen years.

_I didn’t know my body could do that!_

_**Yours** couldn’t._

Tad still dreamed and remembered nothing, except nowadays a sense of loss. Of people not wanting him to go, and him not wanting to go, and yet he didn’t stay. He woke up knowing Charlotte was speaking to him in his dreams, but never knowing what she said.

Another thing Inner Anderson had initially resented was the Checklist. Now he reminded Tad of it at crime scenes, if he’d missed anything. He was proud that Sherlock had to be called in less and less often. If Sherlock and John noticed or resented the fact, they didn’t know. Tad assumed they were busy with other things. _Not **those** things_ , he said sharply to Inner Anderson’s smirk. _Moriarty things._

But the detective and his blogger were called in often enough. One time, Tad was working out alone in the gym when John Watson sauntered in, hands in pockets.

Tad didn’t worry too much about what John Watson saw. He could see himself in a mirror. Tad Anderson had the physique of a fucking pixie, he _knew_ , but he’d always been wiry, nimble. Hell of a dancer. The neatly trimmed beard made him look more mature at least.

He slowed to a fast walk on the treadmill, then to a slow one, and then dismounted. He towelled the sweat from his face.

“You right?” he asked John.

“I was going to ask you that.”

“I’m tip-top. Thanks for asking.”

John continued to study him. It was sort of worse than when Sherlock did it. Tad tried to ignore it, but in the end, fidgeting, he demanded, “What?”

John’s face did that thing it did – a dozen things flitting across it. Hard to keep up with. Concern, irritation, a bit of embarrassment maybe, and that look he got when he was about to come on all Doctor Watson.

“You remember that day at the abandoned butcher’s. The kid who’d been hung on a meat hook?”

“Sure.” Tad drank from his water bottle.

“Have you seen a doctor since then?”

“No. Should I?”

“The fainting fit you had.”

“I had the flu. That’s all.”

“It’s just…”

“Mmm?”

“You’ve… changed significantly since then. Behaviourally. Your attitude.”

“Become less of a twat, you mean?”

A quirk of a smile, quickly sobered. “Let’s say more patient.”

“If you like. Why should I be seeing a doctor about that?”

“Sudden changes in… personality…” John was getting awkward again, but determined in that doctorly way, “They may indicate some form of… brain trauma.”

Tad blinked. “Brain trauma.”

“Blood clot. A blow.”

“I stop being an arse and you think it’s because I’ve had an aneurism?” John looked so uncomfortable that Tad began to laugh. A giggle, a snort, then all out hilarity. He couldn’t stop, which even he found a bit alarming, but honest to god. “Fucking hell, John. No, I haven’t had a blow to the head. I’ve just…” Hell. How to explain? Not possible. “Good of you to check up on me, but I’m fine. This is the new Tad Anderson. Like the old Tad Anderson but with less resentment.”

John managed a puzzled grin at that, but apparently he hadn’t finished. “And all this stuff about Moriarty?”

Tad’s laughter died stone dead.

“We know you’re looking into it. We don’t know why.”

Tad shrugged. “After the bombings last year…”

“Nobody else seems to know he exists. But you’re making enquiries. Following up crimes that seem unconnected, except that Sherlock thinks he’s behind them. And you’re hanging around that school in Suffolk like a guard whippet. What do you know about the nurse that disappeared?”

Tad was worried that he didn’t know where she’d gone, but he’d counted it a victory that the kids were taken out of school before the end of term, sent back to the US. They wouldn’t be kidnapped now. Good for the kids, good for the Met, good for Sherlock.

He didn’t know if it was enough, though.

“Her name was Mary Morstan," he told John, hoping it would help. "Not her real name; that was Alice Abernathy. I think she might have been a spy. Her records say she’s dead, but she assumed that identity. She was up to something, but now…”

“She’s up to something new. Sherlock’s not telling me everything, but he’s worried.”

Tad scrubbed the towel over the back of his neck. He swallowed.

“You love him,” he said.

John blinked. A smile began and was wrestled back into place. He regarded Tad with steady blue eyes. “Yes. I do.”

“And he loves you.”

“Yes. He does.”

“Then don’t let him…” Tad shook his head and tried again. “Stick with him. If he tries to send you away, don’t go.”

And then suddenly, there was the other John Watson. The one Tad rarely saw, but he knew existed. The soldier. The Captain. The one who wasn’t kind.

“I can’t explain,” said Tad, too fast, “I can’t. I don’t know how. I have… I have dreams. I had… it ends badly. Moriarty and Sherlock. Moriarty wants to destroy him. Not just kill him. _Destroy_ him.”

“Burn the heart out of him,” muttered John.

“I don’t know how to stop him,” Tad confessed.

“Dreams, you said?”

Tad waited for the inevitable scoffing.

“Sherlock’d be pretty priceless about that. But… when I was in Afghanistan… weird shit happened sometimes. Really… really weird shit. I don’t for a minute think you’re having prophetic dreams, but if you’ve got a bad feeling from all this digging around you’re doing… listen to your instinct. And tell me if you find out anything.”

Tad, relieved, promised that he would.

*

The triple break-in happened two days later. The Crown jewels, the Bank of London, Pentonville Prison. Moriarty was arrested, smiling smugly all the while.

“Greg, tell Mycroft he’s going to get to the jury.”

“What?”

“Moriarty’s going to use the hotel video system to threaten the jury. Tell Mycroft…”

“Anderson, I don’t know why you think…”

“I’m not stupid, Greg. I know about the cars, about the nights away, about you and Mycroft Holmes. Now are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him what? How would you even know that?”

“Just tell him. Please. If I’m wrong and he wastes his time monitoring it, you can fire me. Send me down to traffic duties. Whatever you fucking like _but you tell Mycroft Holmes that James Moriarty has started on his plan to destroy Sherlock_.”

Tad released the fistful of Greg’s shirt. He dashed at the tears of anger, frustration, fear, at the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Greg, please. Just tell him.”

Greg must have told him. Sherlock made a twat of himself at the trial of course – arrogant dick – but Moriarty was convicted. The little shit was surprised, obviously – it was all over that sullen face of his, expressionless as a snake, with that reptilian motion of his head, the only emotion at all in his eyes. His terrifying fucking eyes.

And then Jim Moriarty laughed in the dock and sauntered away under guard.

He was assisted in an escape as he was being led from the courthouse. Both guards were shot dead.

Sherlock Holmes, apparently, made tea for the creepy little fucker for their tete a tete a little later in the day.

Tad could see the tension between Sherlock and John. He couldn’t see how to help, how to fix it.

“Stop keeping secrets from him,” he hissed at Sherlock once, and the look Sherlock gave him should have blistered skin.

John, distracted, let slip that dangerous people had moved into the neighbourhood of Baker Street, and that _Sherlock’s Fucking Brother_ wouldn’t talk to him about it.

The US ambassador’s kids weren’t kidnapped. Someone did make off with an eleven year old Saudi princess.

Tad did his best to solve it without Sherlock. He did his fucking damnedest and he couldn’t. He knew enough to temper the accusations of fraud. He tried to sway Sally from her course, and she listened, but there were others who resented Sherlock’s high-handed approach. McLennan, Jones and Thiele had resentment enough for a hundred, and made it count.

It had been a long time since Tad had felt so useless.

He sat with his file – fifty pages thick now – and read it and read it and read it, trying to piece it all together. There had to be some new course to take? Someone who could help.

Tad went to St Bart’s to see Molly. She didn’t know him, and that hurt. But she was sweet and polite, as always, that gentle exterior masking strength and purpose that people should know she had, if only they paid attention.

“I can’t explain,” he began urgently.

“All right, then,” she responded, half encouraging, half alarmed.

“But… terrible things are happening. With James Moriarty and Sherlock. I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but he’s trying to kill Sherlock. Make Sherlock kill himself. So… so if Sherlock asks you to help him... With anything. Do it. Let me know if can do anything. _Anything_.”

“Sherlock doesn’t need me…”

“He does. He’s going to need you. John too. Please. _Promise me_.”

She blinked rapidly. Big brown eyes. Tad couldn’t help thinking of her and Greg. Of David and Chris and Chloe.

Then he saw the team going out to arrest Sherlock, and he couldn’t stop that either. He and Sally tried to argue for him, to Sherlock’s surprise, but the weight of evidence was too much for now. There’d been the screaming girl weighing down that end of it.

Soon after, the Kitty Riley article came out.

 _You can’t kill an idea_.

Well, Tad was going to fucking **_try_**.

He called John. John didn’t answer.

Tad texted.

_Do not leave his side. Moriarty will win if you leave him at all. Stay with him._

John did it the same way this time – he punched the Chief and was arrested, and Sherlock took off with him. Cuffed together.

Tad checked his notes and instead of joining in the man hunt, he first demanded of Greg to speak with Mycroft. Greg hardly had to pretend ignorance when Tad’s phone rang.

Mycroft.

“It’s happening,” Tad snapped over the phone, “You have to stop it.”

“I can’t. Sherlock doesn’t listen to me.”

“Moriarty did,” snarled Tad, “You told him all that stuff for the Kitty Riley article. All that bullshit about Richard Brook. That’s your doing.”

“Sherlock will survive. He will recover. It will do him some good to learn some humility.”

“Humility, you arse? I don’t know what’s going to happen this time! Maybe this time he’s really going to jump off that building to save them.”

“To save whom? Irrespective of the threats, I don’t imagine that’s very likely, do you? Have you _met_ my brother?”

“I hope that snark keeps you warm at night, you prick,” Tad forgot that he’d ever been afraid of Mycroft Holmes, “Because if Sherlock doesn’t jump, Moriarty’s snipers are going to take out Mrs Hudson, John Watson and Greg Lestrade.”

“Gregory?”

“Yes, _Gregory_. You don’t think Moriarty pointing a sniper at you or me would bother Sherlock, do you? It's all about the people who actually matter to him. So stop playing games, you smug arsehole, and _do something_.”

Tad jabbed the off key and took off for Baker Street. He called Sally as he went. “Sally, I need you. Baker Street. Come armed.”

Three assassins. Greg, Mrs Hudson, John. He’d never known who was assigned to each of them, but he did remember the case notes. How John had been called away to Baker Street on a false alarm, leaving Sherlock at St Bart’s. At Moriarty’s mercy.

Tad knocked on the door to 221B and then pushed straight past Mrs Hudson, who flapped and fussed and was cross about his lack of manners.

“Sorry, Mrs H,” he said, “It’s important. You’ve got a workman here?”

“He’s just doing a little…”

“You have to leave now, Mrs H…”

“But I’m just…”

“ _Now_ , Mrs Hudson!”

Tad seized her by the arms and pushed her out the door, turning with her, shielding her as the tattooed workman appeared in the foyer, the pistol in his hands.

A shot rang out, and a second, and Tad knelt, curled around Mrs Hudson on the footpath, shivering, wondering why it didn’t hurt, then terrified that it was Mrs Hudson who’d been hit, but she was complaining about her hip and the noise and her headache, and he peeked up as Sally brushed past him, gun drawn, into Baker Street. He could tell by the look on her face that she'd fired her gun, and that the man beyond the door was no longer a threat.

He heard her call it in. “Despatch, I’ve had a shooting; an armed Caucasian male, mid-thirties. Send an ambulance and a forensics crew. Ph… Tad, are you all right?”

Tad straightened up, relieved beyond speaking that he _could_. He stared owlishly at Sally. He helped Mrs Hudson to her feet. She stopped complaining when she saw the dead man on her entrance rug.

“Ooh, the blood’ll never come out,” Mrs Hudson said, pale, fingers pressed to her lips.

Sally and Tad exchanged a ragged smile. Trust Sherlock Holmes's landlady to be more worried about the stains than the dead man on her floor. Well, the dead man had just tried to kill her.

“I have to go,” said Tad.

“You can’t go, the crew’s on its way…”

But he’d gone off at a run already.

Tad called John. This time, John answered.

“Mrs Hudson’s fine,” Tad blurted.

“She’s been sho-”

“No, she hasn’t. We got the sniper.

“Sniper?”

“Forget it. She’s fine. He didn’t touch her. He’s dead, and I’m coming to St Bart’s. Now you turn around and get back to Sherlock and _don’t you let him jump_.”

“Sherlock, _jump_? What the fuck?”

Tad heard John give terse instructions to the cabbie, and he rang off.

He called Greg.

“Anderson, what the fuck did you say to Mycroft?”

“What he needed to be told. Now are you at St Bart’s?”

“Nearly.”

“Get there. Right this instant, head to the roof and make sure Sherlock doesn’t jump.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sherlock’s on the roof with Moriarty. Moriarty’s threatened to shoot you, Mrs Hudson and John Watson if he doesn’t jump. Mrs Hudson's out of danger, and your creepy boyfriend's looking out for you. So you get to St Bart's and don’t let Sherlock jump. John’s on his way.”

“I don’t know what the hell’s got into you lately.” Tad could hear the commotion as the DI went running out the door.

“I’ll explain later,” Tad promised him.

He didn’t think he would. He didn’t think he could. Tad had no idea why he was so certain that this had to stop here and now. Sherlock had survived last time, hadn’t he? It had been awful and had broken each of them in different ways. Maybe in ways they’d needed breaking, but that was no reason. Lessons didn’t have to break you to be learned, surely?

He couldn’t stop this heavy sense of urgency, though. This place was different. How things happened here were different.

What if here, Sherlock’s plan didn’t work? What if here, he really died?

What if, after all this, Tad couldn’t save them after all?


	7. What's My Lesson?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crisis point as arrived. Mrs Hudson's sniper has been dealt with. Mycroft is moving in on the marksman slated for Greg. But what of the one meant for John Watson? And what of Sherlock Holmes, on the roof of St Bart's, preparing to jump to his death to save the man he loves? Tad has one more chance to stop this: to save Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double dose today, to keep on track.

Tad tried to call Mycroft, but the wily bastard had called from an unknown number. Nevertheless, his phone rang again just as Tad lurched out of the cab – throwing handfuls of notes at the driver – and ran towards the car park from behind the building.

“What?”

“Gregory’s sniper has been neutralised,” Mycroft said promptly, “I have news of your work at Baker Street. We haven’t yet located the third.”

“You’re supposed to be the smartest spook on the planet,” snapped Tad, looking around desperately as he ran, “You haven’t convinced me yet.” He came up to the corner of the hospital. Four people were trying to wrestle some kind of voluminous blue structure into place. He didn’t think they’d get it set up in time.

He heard a gunshot ring out and stared upwards, but he couldn’t see anything. He ran further out into the street, and looked up to see Sherlock Holmes standing on the precipice of the building.

Another cab pulled up, and John emerged, a phone pressed to his ear. “I’m coming in.” John froze, backtracked, stared up. The blood drained from his face. “No. Sherlock, no. Whatever that maniac's told you to do, don’t.”

Tad tore his eyes from them and scanned rooftops and windows.

“You can shut up, Sherlock. Shut up. The first time we met, you told me all about my sister.”

Was that a light glinting up there on the roof opposite? A shadow moving?

“You could,” he heard John say, voice breaking. “ _You_ could. Please. Don’t do this. I love you. I love you. Don’t let him make you do this to us.”

“Gregory’s almost there,” said Mycroft in Tad’s ear.

“Where’s John’s sniper?” Tad breathed, terrified he knew the answer.

“We’re moving in now.”

“Move faster!”

John began to move. “No. Stop it now.” Stopped. He was crying. “All right. I'll stay here. Right here. Sherlock. Sweetheart. I will bloody call you sweetheart if I want to. Don’t. I don’t want a note. I want you. Please.”

The shadow, the glint, resolved into a shape. There, on the edge of the rooftop. A shape in black, with a black line protruding from the darkness. Lined up on John.

“Hurry.” Tad’s voice was hoarse.

“No!” the cry was torn jagged from John’s throat and he lurched forward, hand reaching for the man on the rooftop, beseeching.

“Gregory has Sherlock; Sherlock is away fromt the ledge,” Mycroft reported, swift, crisp, voice full of relief, but Tad didn’t hear because he was running.

Arms wide for a tackle, he threw himself forward at John. Small but solid John, hard to tackle, but John’s horrified notice was elsewhere, directed up up up to the roof of St Bart’s, but always up. Nobody was falling.

Tad heard the shot just as he collided with John.

He thought he heard a second one, as he turned, putting his slight frame between John and the sinister shadow on the roof, pushing John to the ground and trying to cover him.

He felt a thump, like a punch, in his back, and another, a cracking blow to his skull, and wondered if John had hit him for getting in the way.

Tad fell, he slithered, he folded down onto the road onto his back. He heard another shot in the distance.

Through bleary eyes he saw a body falling. Falling. Falling from the rooftop opposite the hospital. A body dressed in black. Long blonde hair streaming down.

“Sniper down,” he thought he heard Mycroft say, though he didn’t know how. He didn’t know where his phone was. “Abernathy’s down.”

“Anderson. Tad. Tad, look at me.”

Tad obeyed, because John Watson in that tone of voice was always to be obeyed, whether it was at band rehearsals or on the field. He'd sounded like that day after rehearsals, when the car bomb had gone off. In command. Kind. Unflappable. Unstoppable. Doctor Captain Watson.

Tad felt pressure on his chest, then on his back, as John checked him over.

“Tad, can you hear me.”

“John,” he said, and Tad hardly recognised his own voice. “Is he okay? Sherlock?”

Tad gasped at the pain of John pushing his hand against the hole in his chest. He whimpered at the pain of John's hands packing a jacket against the hole in his back.

“Tad, look at me.”

Blood poured from the hole in his skull. At least, he thought it was a hole.

“Is there a hole in my head?”

“No,” John told him, and Tad believed him, “Just a graze. You’ll be fine.”

A great dark, flapping shadow loomed.

“Here, help!” John commanded the shadow, and the next thing Tad knew, Sherlock Holmes was kneeling beside him, using that swanky blue scarf to bind the bullet holes in his body. John was barking orders and taking his pulse and telling people out of sight what Tad's vitals were and what to do.

“You don’t have to leave now,” Tad gasped. He couldn’t help smiling at the look of stricken concern on Sherlock’s face. “You can stay. You and John c-can… s-s-stay. T-together.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, “I can stay.”

“P-p-plan b-b-buggered up, d-d-didn’t it?”

“Yes, Anderson. It buggered up. I’d have died.”

Tad blinked. He tried to nod. Yes, yes. Yes, he’d done it. He’d stopped it. He’d saved them.

“I want to go home, now,” he said. Tears were streaming from his eyes. It hurt. His body hurt. His heart. He was so lonely. He wanted Charlotte. He wanted his family. He wanted his old life, even with the aches and pains of being 53, even with his ruined left hand. He could feel Inner Anderson keening with the pain of the bullet wounds. “Please. Can I go? I miss my wife. My Charlotte. I want to see my daughters. I want to see my friends. Please. Can I go home?”

He was crying hard now.

A hand cupped his cheek. Patted. “You’ll be all right, Tad,” said John. “The trauma team’s coming. Nearly here. Hang on. We’re going to look after you.”

“P-p-lease…” was all he could say.

He felt Sherlock squeeze his hand. He blinked into Sherlock’s concerned gaze.

“Thank you,” Sherlock whispered. “For John. Thank you.”

Tad closed his eyes.

He drifted away.


	8. The Day They Feel Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In one world, an Anderson has been shot - but in this world, Tad wakes up to the place where he belongs. Home at last. The nightmare is over, for him at least.

_He can hear her, his Charlotte – his strength and his shelter and his hope and the sweetness in his life – saying his name._

_“Hi Taddy, baby. The doctors say you’re dreaming, and that’s why your eyes move like that even though they're closed. They say you can still wake up. Wake up, sweetie. I miss you.”_

_A very little later – he thinks it’s later - she’s singing to him; one of John’s songs. The band used to sing it._

If I’m conducting light  
What is it makes my darkness bright?  
Because I am, I am, I am illuminated.

_Those words aren’t about him at all, but Charlotte is holding his hand against her cheek and singing like they mean something to her._

_“Pretty. Pretty. Pretty voice.”_

_Charlotte gasps. His eyes are still closed, but he hears her say, “Taddy?”_

_He tries to open his eyes but the world is too bright to see anything. He closes them again. They water._

_“Am I home?” His voice croaks and his mouth is dry._

_“Oh, Taddy,” she says. She’s kissing his face. His forehead. He thinks he should tell her to stop. He’s got a hole there in his head where Not-Mary-Morstan shot him. But he doesn’t want Charlotte to stop kissing him._

_The room fills up with doctors, and he thinks that’s for the best. He’s been shot._

_“I’ve been shot,” he mumbles to them._

_“You’ve had severe pneumonia, Dr Anderson,” says a steady voice. “You’ve been asleep for a while. It’s good to have you back.”_

_“Charlotte? Where's my…?”_

_“Your wife is right here, Dr Anderson.”_

_“M’name’s Tad.”_

_“All right, Tad. Here you go. Look up here. Excellent. Left. Right. Good.”_

_He peers into the glow of the penlight. He sees past the glare to Charlotte, and his eyes water again, spill. “I had a bad dream,” he says, looking at her._

_The doctor finishes preliminary checks and as soon as it’s possible, Charlotte is sitting beside him again, holding his hand again, kissing his fingers and his cheek again._

_It’s bustling and busy and his body aches, but the pain is distant and dull. He’s almost certain there are no holes in him now. Not even in his heart, which ached so much for so many weeks._

_He’s whole again now. Home again._

_Home._

*

Ten days, Tad Anderson later learned. He’d been in a coma brought about by complications from the pneumonia for _ten days_. A level 8 on the Glasgow Coma Scale.

Tad learned that Charlotte and his daughters had played his old Gladstone’s Collar and Collared albums for him while he was unresponsive. His fingers tapped sometimes, they said, to the rhythms. That’s what had given them hope he would come back to them.

He spent another two days in hospital, undergoing tests to ensure there was no long-term repercussions, and that his whole health was on the mend.

His wife and daughters visited him, and told him how Mycroft Holmes – for the first time in his life, Tad thought of him as ‘Mycroft’ and not ‘that terrifying man’ – had ensured the best doctors had overseen his care, thanks to Sally. Charlotte told him how the band had rallied together to look after her, Nicola and Teresa.

Sherlock surprised Tad by stopping in with a folder of papers.

“I delivered two of your classes,” said Sherlock without preamble, “I’ve corrected your notes.”

Tad sagged against the hospital pillow and reminded himself that this was Sherlock’s way of helping.

“Allbright isn’t," Sherlock added acerbicly. "He’s an idiot. I’ve failed him in both spot tests.”

Tad sighed. “He’s still can’t get his head around the idea that absence of evidence can be a kind of evidence.” He voice still rasped a little.

“Markham shows promise.”

“Mmm.” Tad stared at his hands. After a long moment, he looked up into Sherlock, who was regarding him with puzzled expectation.

“Just spit it out,” Sherlock advised.

Tad swallowed. “I don’t know that I… did I ever…?”

“I haven’t got all day.”

“You don’t ever make this easy.”

“What am I supposed to be making easy for you?”

“An apology.”

“What on earth for? Not for making me take those classes of yours, surely. Unless you nearly killed yourself with pneumonia on purpose.”

“For calling you a fake, for fuck’s sake,” Tad snapped, then couldn’t continue because of a coughing fit. He subsided to find Sherlock’s hand supporting his back and looking of alarm, both of which vanished immediately. When he’d recovered, Tad continued more calmly. “All that bullshit with Moriarty. I believed it back then. I was... it was my fault, what happened. I’m sorry. All right? I don’t think I’ve ever said it, so I’m saying it now. I’m sorry for what we did. What _I_ did. If I hadn’t…”

“He’d have found another way. James Moriarty was a hundred times smarter than you. He was nearly as smart as I am.”

Tad snorted a laugh. “Yeah. Right.” But he glanced back to Sherlock to find him frowning. “Fine. He was an evil genius with an evil plan and he would have done all that to you anyway, even without me. But I’m still sorry.”

Sherlock looked alarmed again. “I… it’s old news, Anderson. Long forgotten. Long… forgiven.”

“Oh.” Tad’s eyes pricked and he grit his teeth so that he wouldn’t cry.

“What the hell brought this on?”

“I… had… dreams. While I was… in my coma.” The words fell reluctantly from his tongue. “About… that. I had bad dreams. Terrible dreams. Moriarty almost won.”

 _I was gone for months_ , he wanted to say, _not ten days. **Months**_.

Tad half expected to be mocked, but instead Sherlock – with his greying curls and his crow’s feet and looking properly like Sherlock again – Sherlock looked thoughtful. Perhaps even kind.

“We all have bad dreams,” said Sherlock softly, “But John and I, and you, are lucky. Bad dreams end, and we wake up to _this_ life.”

Tad blinked. He knew, really, that Sherlock was no stranger to  nightmares. “Yes,” he said, and then, “Thanks.”

“For what?” the scoffing tone was back.

“I don’t know,” Tad admitted. “For your part in this life, I guess.”

For a horrible moment, Tad thought Sherlock was going to say ‘you’re welcome’. Perhaps Sherlock feared it too. Instead, Sherlock dropped the folder beside the bed, pulled his coat close and whirled dramatically to leave.

“I’ve got important things to do. Laters,” said Sherlock as he left.

 _Git_ , Tad thought, and found he was thinking it fondly.


	9. Enlarging Your World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, in another reality...

Phillip Anderson felt a trickle of perspiration down his back as he completed his physio. He’d developed a new respect for John Watson, who’d had a similar but much worse injury way back when. This on top of his already immense respect for the man who’d kept him alive long enough to reach surgery. Phil had never really fully appreciated Doc Watson’s skill sets.

Mind you, he’d have happily made his way through life not having to know John’s capacities as a front line trauma medic, but if he had to go and get himself shot by an international assassin, John Watson was the definitely the man to have on hand when shit went down.

Phil wasn’t sure what to make of it all; that strange few months when a second voice in his head had dictated his choices. He’d learned a lot, certainly. The checklist in that notebook on his desk was proof that someone else had been steering his brain for a while. The checklist and the underlined note at the bottom: _Everything you see must be explained; not explained away._

Everything but this of course: that for three months he’d been someone else.

And anyway, the whole thing was moot. By the time Phil/Tad was racing for St Bart’s hospital, Phil was as desperate as his doppelganger to keep Sherlock from jumping and to protect John from the results. All that while of watching and listening and _learning_ had not been wasted.

Phil Anderson would never tell a soul about all of that, of course. He was still a police officer in the forensics division, and thanks to his strange passenger, he’d become a much better one. If he hadn’t exactly earned the respect of Sherlock Holmes, he’d at least won himself a reprieve from Holmes’s scorn.

The fact he’d almost died saving John Watson probably helped.

Sherlock Holmes’s odd and almost reluctant regard for him wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

Phil had been furious with Tad for breaking up with Sally, though he had echoes of memories of another wife, of daughters, of love and happiness elsewhere. Tad had made up for it by at last getting him away from Lorraine, though. Swings and roundabouts, really.

And then he’d been shot and Sally had spent every spare moment she could by his side. Lorraine had shown up, not completely without feeling, but the minute she’d seen Sally, red-eyed but calm and holding his hand at his sickbed, Lorraine had simply said, “You’re welcome to him,” and pushed off.

When he’d regained consciousness and she’d whispered “Tad?” he’d hurt himself shaking his head.

“No. No. No, no, no. It’s Phil. It’s Phillip. I’m back. I’m here again.”

That had been written off has fevered mumblings, but she’d gone back to calling him Phil, at least.

Sally had taken time off to help him at the hospital, and then brought him home to her place so she could keep an eye on him through the healing and the headaches and the trauma counselling and the physio.

Finally, she’d said to him, “You can stay, you know. Here. With me. If you want to.”

“Yes. Please. I’d like that.”

A week later, the first 'I love you' was said, and reciprocated. Six months later, they were still living together, and doing better than ever.

“Sure you don’t want me to call you Thaddeus again?” she'd teased him once.

Phil had shrugged. “I was going through a phase.”

“I noticed.”

“It means ‘courageous’, you know. Thaddeus. I hated it when I was a kid, but I’ve decided it’s not so bad.”

“So that’s yes to Thaddeus?”

“No,” he’d said, “I like Phil just fine.” And Phil he had been again, ever since.

Now, Phil looked to the door as Sally as she entered the weights room.

“How is it today?” she asked.

“Good. I’ve almost got full mobility again.”

She came right up to him and ran her hands over his arm and shoulder – over the scar tissue where the bullet had entered his back and pushed its way out of his chest. Then her fingers traced up his neck and still bearded cheek to his hairline. John had lied a fraction there. The bullet had cut a furrow through his scalp – a bit more than just a graze – but the wound had healed and his hair had grown back.

Even though he was sweaty, she kissed him, a peck on the lips. “Great to hear it. I’ve packed the car ready to go, as soon as you’ve cleaned up.”

“Won’t be long.”

 Sally decided to keep him company in the shower, but they still managed to get away in plenty of time.

*

Sherlock and John had eloped, it was true, but after the fact there was a party. A small affair, hosted by Henry Knight at his huge house, with half the guests in his guest rooms and the remainder at the local pub, where the happy couple were celebrities of a sort.

John Watson’s parents, Jack and Fiona were there, along with his sister Harry and her wife, Clara. Second time around for them, apparently – they kept joking they were like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Phil was aware there’d been problems in the past, but things seemed to be working out for them this time, which was nice.

Sherlock’s parents were there too. Who’d have known two such normal people would have produced Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.

Greg was there with Mycroft too – their discreet affair had come into the open after those horrifying few moments when Mycroft thought Greg was about to be murdered by a sniper. They were still discreet, of course, but here they were, discreetly holding hands. Mr Holmes kept nudging his wife and murmuring things like ‘more wedding bells soon, if Mycroft keeps his head!’.

Mycroft was pretending not to hear them, apparently, standing quietly by a much happier and sleeker-looking Greg and saying things to make Greg laugh.

Molly had also brought a date. Phil’d had no idea Molly was lesbian, or bi maybe it was, but there was Dr Hooper with a tall, dark-haired Anglo-Indian woman at her side. Nirupa, her name was. An anthropologist and linguist. They’d apparently met at a folk music symposium. Phil had likewise had no idea that Molly was a secret player of the Irish harp. He’d been discovering all sorts of things about the people around him lately.

Molly kindly asked after him, and kindly did not talk about that day he’d gone to her to beg that she help Holmes, and to let him do the same.

“Your friend seems nice,” said Phil.

“My girlfriend,” Molly said, and a besotted smile was plastered all over her face. “I finally found someone tall, dark, mysterious, gorgeous and super smart who loves me back.”

“Good on you,” said Phil.

“Yes,” agreed Molly, “Good on me. You and Sally look happy too.”

“Yeah. We are.”

“It could all have turned out so differently.”

Phil carried in his head a memory that wasn’t his, of a life that turned out very differently indeed. Not a bad life, no. But nothing like the life he had now.

“A life can turn on a pin,” said Phil, “Anything can happen.”

“It ended well, though, didn’t it?” said Molly, smiling at Nirupa engaged in an intense discussion with Sherlock.

“Yeah, it’s good,” agreed Phil. Sally smiled and saluted him with a flute of champagne from across the room. John grinned at him and waved, light glinting off his new wedding band. Sherlock looked to see who John was smiling at, gave a short but sincere nod and then took John's hand in his.

Sally brought Phil champagne and a plate of canapes, and a kiss. _And a lifetime of happiness_ , he hoped.

 _Yes_ , Phil thought, _this life we have is good. The best of all possible lives.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps some people we love from Guitar Man aren't in this universe - but here John has his mother; here the Holmes parents are good people; here Nirupa (who crushed on the hot keyboard player first time we met her in the GM universe) has found love, and so has Molly. There will be new children, new lives, not the same ones but good, all the same. Very good indeed.
> 
> Thank you to everyone for sharing this 300th story with me.
> 
> Thank you as always for the love and support!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "Mad World" by 221B_Hound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7865965) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)




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